Prostheticshttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/prosthetics
en-usTue, 03 Mar 2015 18:51:24 -0500Tue, 03 Mar 2015 18:51:24 -0500The latest news on Prosthetics from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/les-baugh-is-the-first-person-with-two-mind-controlled-robotic-arms-2014-12A Man Who Lost Both Arms 40 Years Ago Is Making History As The First Person With Two Mind-Controlled Robotic Armshttp://www.businessinsider.com/les-baugh-is-the-first-person-with-two-mind-controlled-robotic-arms-2014-12
Thu, 18 Dec 2014 11:46:31 -0500Dave Smith
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5493032f6da811b86a47ada6-1200-924/les-baugh-prosthetic-arms-bionic.png" border="0" alt="les-baugh-prosthetic-arms-bionic">Les Baugh lost both his arms in an electrical accident 40 years ago. But thanks to <a href="http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2014/141216.asp">Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory</a> (APL), the Colorado man is now able to wear and control two robotic limbs simply by thinking about them, the research group said in a press release.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Baugh visited the APL in June for two weeks as part of the company’s research to improve its modular prosthetic limbs (MPL). But before he could actually wear the contraption, he needed to undergo a unique kind of surgery, called targeted muscle innervation.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Dr. Albert Chi, a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, says the procedure is relatively new, and it “reassigns nerves that once controlled the arm and the hand.” This would allow Baugh to control his new limbs just by thinking about the action he wants them to perform.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Once Baugh recovered from his surgery, he and researchers used pattern recognition algorithms to identify how individual muscles would contract and communicate with each other, and translate that data into actual movements inside the prosthetic arms.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">According to the APL, Baugh was fitted with custom sockets for his shoulders and torso so he could support the arms. After plenty of tests, Baugh was ready to use the finished product: “I just went into a whole different world,” he told the APL.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5493027becad0416178de3da/robotic-arm-gif.gif" border="0" alt="robotic arm gif" style="color: #000000;"></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">APL’s Courtney Moran says she was “floored” by what Baugh was able to accomplish in a short amount of time — just 10 days of training. He could move cups to shelves of different heights, “but the speed with which he learned motions and the number of motions he was able to control in such a short period of time was far beyond expectation,” she said.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">While researchers compare these prosthetics to “the early days of the internet,” APL’s researchers hope to send Baugh home with a pair of these prosthetics soon. Baugh says “Maybe for once I’ll be able to put change in the pop machine and get pop out of it.”</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Check out Baugh and his bionic arms at work below.</span></p>
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<p class="embed-spacer"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/uncharted-4-gameplay-trailer-is-incredibly-realistic-2014-12" >Even People Who Hate Games Will Be Blown Away By How Realistic This One Is</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/les-baugh-is-the-first-person-with-two-mind-controlled-robotic-arms-2014-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-100000-bionic-prosthetics-can-do-2014-11Here's What $100,000 Bionic Prosthetics Can Dohttp://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-100000-bionic-prosthetics-can-do-2014-11
Thu, 20 Nov 2014 12:25:15 -0500Eric Markowitz
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/546e1cd0eab8eab82ae46795-600-399/prosthetic-5.jpg" border="0" alt="prosthetic"></p><p>There are about 10 million amputees around the world, and some 20 percent of them live in the U.S.&nbsp;Prosthetic legs are relatively straightforward—you can even buy them on&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ebay.com/bhp/prosthetic-leg" target="_blank">eBay&nbsp;</a>now. But prosthetic arms and hands are a much more difficult,&nbsp;and intriguing,&nbsp;challenge.</p>
<p>Think about it: The hand is composed&nbsp;of 27 little bones. Your fingers perform tiny motions to complete even the simplest task, like tying your shoes. So you can imagine what goes into creating a truly bionic hand. For many arm amputees,&nbsp;<a href="http://hosmer.com/products/hooks/" target="_blank">hooks&nbsp;</a>are seriously still the best option.</p>
<p>But in the last few years, there’s been a kind of&nbsp;boom in the&nbsp;technology behind these prosthetic limbs. Their&nbsp;<a href="http://enablingthefuture.org/upper-limb-prosthetics/" target="_blank">names</a>—like the Raptor Hand and Cyborg Beast—sound like something out of a sci-fi movie,&nbsp;but they are very much real.</p>
<p>On one hand (ha, ha), you have ultra-cheap, DIY 3D-printed limbs that are being used to treat amputees in developing countries. On the other,&nbsp;scientists have developed some mind-bending innovations. Recently, scientists began&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/427939/brain-chip-helps-quadriplegics-move-robotic-arms-with-their-thoughts/" target="_blank">implanting brain</a>&nbsp;chips into paralyzed patients, who control artificial limbs with their thoughts.</p>
<p>The industry around these prosthetic devices is growing, too. More than&nbsp;50 companies are competing to dominate the world’s need for fake arms and legs. We looked at some of the coolest prosthetic limbs&nbsp;out there.</p>
<h3><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/546e14d16da811fc483cffd9-840-569/robohand406110406.jpg" border="0" alt="Robohand406110406"></h3>
<h3>Name:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.robohand.net/about/" target="_blank">Robohand</a></h3>
<p><strong>Cost:&nbsp;</strong>About $2,000</p>
<p><strong>What makes it cool:</strong>&nbsp;For amputees, going through the process of having a prosthetic fitted can take week—even months. It’s also outrageously expensive, especially if you’re uninsured. All the parts of the Robohand can be custom-fitted and 3D-printed with a Makerbot, which you can now buy at a local Home Depot for $2,000.&nbsp;So far, it’s been used in places like Sudan and Haiti.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WT3772yhr0o"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Backstory:</strong>&nbsp;In 2011, Richard Van As, a carpenter in Johannesburg, South Africa, accidentally cut off all the fingers on his&nbsp;right hand in a work accident. Pretty much the same day, he set out looking for a cheap, prosthetic option, but there was none. So he went online, connected with an engineer named Ivan Owen and began collaborating.</p>
<h3><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/546e1584ecad049136e25bba-840-569/prosthetic-bespokeinnovations818444216.jpg" border="0" alt="Prosthetic BespokeInnovations818444216"></h3>
<h3>Name:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bespokeinnovations.com/" target="_blank">Bespoke Innovations</a></h3>
<p><strong>Cost:</strong>&nbsp;$4,000 to $6,000</p>
<p><strong>What makes it cool:&nbsp;</strong>Technically, Bespoke Innovations is not a prosthetic company, but it makes some incredibly cool “fairings”—essentially specialized coverings that add personality or style or function to a prosthetic. “Fairings can be enhanced with patterns, graphics and materials—including leather, ballistic nylon fabric, chrome plating and even tattoos,” the company notes. “By creating a unique custom form that presents the individual, Bespoke Innovations hopes to change the way the world thinks of prostheses.”</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/546e15deeab8eaa10fe46794-840-569/bespoke1915716723.jpg" border="0" alt="bespoke1915716723"><strong>Backstory:&nbsp;</strong>Bespoke Innovations was founded in San Francisco in&nbsp;2010 by Scott Summit, a designer and entrepreneur. “Growing up in the ’70s and watching&nbsp;The Six Million Dollar Man&nbsp;every Sunday night. This was an inspiration for us,” Summit&nbsp;<a href="http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2808" target="_blank">said&nbsp;</a>a recent Stanford lecture.</p>
<h3><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/546e162fecad043d30e25bbc-840-569/bebionicx431557587.jpg" border="0" alt="bebionicx431557587"></h3>
<h3>Name:&nbsp;<a href="http://bebionic.com/about_us" target="_blank">bebionic3</a></h3>
<p><strong>Cost:&nbsp;</strong>$25,000 to $35,000</p>
<p><strong>What makes it cool:&nbsp;</strong>The bebionic works on a series of grip patterns—14 to be exact. Whether you want to drink a beer or use a power drill, the bebionic was designed so that its user can pretty much do anything. Each digit is powered by its own tiny motor, and each user operates the grip in a totally unique way.</p>
<p>To enact a grip, its user moves his or her biceps or triceps in a specific way. As the company explains: “Electronics [in the artificial hand] measure electrical changes on the skin covering the control muscles and command individual actuators in the hand to provide the desired movements.” You can see how this works&nbsp;in the video below.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/IzgAbYdbn_8"></iframe></p>
<p>RSLSteeper does not release the number of units sold, but the bebionic is one of the more popular models on the market. Getting insurance agencies to pay for a prosthetic can be&nbsp;<a href="http://singularityhub.com/2010/06/30/how-much-is-the-newest-advanced-artificial-hand-11000-usd-video/" target="_blank">notoriously difficult</a>, but the company&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wired.com/2012/11/terminator-arm-prosthetic/" target="_blank">told Wired recently</a>&nbsp;that the costs are low enough that most major carriers in the U.S. should cover it.</p>
<p><strong>Backstory:&nbsp;</strong>The bebionic is manufactured in England by RSLSteeper, and its products have drawn&nbsp;<a href="http://swns.com/news/father-lost-arm-work-accident-bionic-terminator-hand-fitted-27120/" target="_blank">comparisons&nbsp;</a>to the bionic limbs in&nbsp;The Terminator.</p>
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<h3><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/546e19f36da811c45f3cffd9-840-569/ilimb3385076709.jpg" border="0" alt="ilimb3385076709"></h3>
<h3>Name:&nbsp;iLimb</h3>
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<p><strong>Cost:</strong>&nbsp;$80,000 to $120,000</p>
<p><strong>What makes it cool:&nbsp;</strong>The iLimb, like the bebionic, uses tiny motors in each of the digits to create a series of grip patterns. It’s also controlled by electrode&nbsp;that&nbsp;are placed directly on the user’s skin. What makes it different is a new feature called “quick grips,” a smartphone app that&nbsp;tethers to the hand with a Bluetooth connection and that can quickly change&nbsp;the grip. It’s hepful if the person wants to, for example, pick something up that’s at an usual angle.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/cDlQv4FDdxI"></iframe></p>
<p>“Up to 24 different grips can be selected, allowing instant access to new grips with the tap of a button on the app screen,” the company explains. “An additional 12 custom my grips may also be programmed, offering the user up to 36 different grips or gestures.”</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/546e1b5069beddfc4adac8f5-840-840/ilimbapp3393867226.png" border="0" alt="ilimbapp3393867226"><strong>Backstory:&nbsp;</strong>The iLimb is owned by Touch Bionics, one of the world’s largest prosthetics firms. The company&nbsp;<a href="http://www.touchbionics.com/about/history" target="_blank">technically&nbsp;</a>got its start back in 1963, when it was creating prosthetics for children affected by Thalidomide, a skin condition caused by leprosy.</p>
<h3><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/546e1bda6da811c4673cffdc-840-569/prosthetic-darpa4263367512-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Prosthetic Darpa4263367512"></h3>
<h3>Name:&nbsp;DEKA Arm</h3>
<p><strong>Cost:</strong>&nbsp;$100,000+</p>
<p><strong>What makes it cool:</strong>&nbsp;The DEKA Arm—nicknamed by “The Luke Arm” for Luke Skywalker’s bionic arm—is brainchild of the famed inventor Dean Kamen. In May, the DEKA arm, which was funded by a DARPA grant, became&nbsp;<a href="http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2014/05/09a.aspx" target="_blank">the first bionic limb</a>on the market to receive FDA approval. Like the other bionic hands, it operates from&nbsp;electrodes placed on a user’s muscles. But with the DEKA Arm, the switches that control the hand’s grip are placed on the user’s toes.&nbsp;Although the DEKA Arm has been granted FDA approval, it does not yet have any commercial&nbsp;users.</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/uB__jBwMS_4"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Backstory:&nbsp;</strong>Eight years ago, in the midst of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, DARPA&nbsp;<a href="http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/BTO/Programs/Revolutionizing_Prosthetics.aspx" target="_blank">created&nbsp;</a>the “Revolutionizing Prosthetics” campaign help returning veterans. It has won&nbsp;about $100 million in government grants, and has&nbsp;FDA approval.</p>
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</div><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-100000-bionic-prosthetics-can-do-2014-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/autodesk-worth-100-million-2014-10Autodesk Has Just Launched The First Ever 3D Printing Investment Fund — And It's Set To Be Worth $100 Millionhttp://www.businessinsider.com/autodesk-worth-100-million-2014-10
Fri, 31 Oct 2014 16:05:55 -0400Sarah Kimmorley
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54539864eab8ea967abe0243-600-399/3d-rinting copy.png" border="0" alt="3d rinting copy"></p><p>The 3D printing industry is set for some major innovation now Autodesk, Inc. has launched the world’s first investment fund for the industry.</p>
<p>With plans to invest up to $100 million into entrepreneurs, startups and researchers pushing the acceleration of the new technology over the next several years, Autodesk hopes the fund will unlock 3D printing’s potential.</p>
<p>Samir Hanna, Autodesk’s vice president and general manager of Consumer Products and 3D Printing, said “the days of taking a closed, top-down approach to innovating for additive manufacturing are behind us”.</p>
<p>“Numerous industries recognise the value of tapping into entrepreneurs or startups with better ideas and approaches, and 3D printing is no exception.”</p>
<p>Companies and individuals in the 3D printing industry with big ideas and developing software will have to apply to become apart of the The Spark Investment Fund portfolio. If successful, not only will they receive funding but they will also become part of the Spark partner program and have access to marketing and other developer services.</p>
<p>In 2012, Business Insider US listed Autodesk as one of the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-hottest-investment-idea-in-the-world-get-foreign-exposure-especially-emerging-markets-2012-12#autodesk-inc-5">hottest investment ideas on Wall Street</a>&nbsp;due to its high foreign sales exposure. Two years on, Citi is saying the company’s 4D technology is set to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/citi-disruptive-innovations-2014-2014-5">utterly transform the world</a>&nbsp;– watch this space.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/autodesk-worth-100-million-2014-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/artificial-hand-is-the-first-to-restore-touch-2014-10A New Artificial Hand Can Restore Touch — A First For Prostheticshttp://www.businessinsider.com/artificial-hand-is-the-first-to-restore-touch-2014-10
Sat, 11 Oct 2014 08:26:00 -0400Tanya Lewis
<p><img class="full" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5438521aecad04d51a4e1beb-1200-800/ot10hr.jpg" border="0" alt="prosthetic"></p><p>The sensations that many people take for granted — the featherweight feel of a piece of fruit, that lets you hold a cherry without crushing it, or the soft touch of a loved one's hand — are beyond the reach of many amputees. But a new kind of prosthetic could restore sensation for people who have lost a limb, as well as relieve their pain, researchers say.</p>
<p>One patient who tried the new prosthetic said he can now feel textures such as cotton balls and sandpaper again. Igor Spetic lost his right hand in an industrial accident four years ago, but when he wears the prosthetic hand, the device <a href="http://www.livescience.com/14245-paralyzed-man-spinal-cord-injury-walks-electrical-stimulation-therapy.html">stimulates the nerves</a> in his upper arm, allowing him to feel.</p>
<p>What's more, after he began using the prosthetic, Spetic no longer felt the phantom limb pain he had suffered since his injury.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5438548f6da811f13da3eec6-1200-800/ot2hr.jpg" border="0" alt="prosthetic"></p>
<p>A second patient who lost his right hand and forearm in an accident, Keith Vonderhuevel, also said that most of his phantom limb pain disappeared after he began using the new prosthetic, according to the study, published today (Oct. 8) in the journal Science Translational Medicine. [<a href="http://www.livescience.com/48195-prosthetic-hand-restores-touch-heals-phantom-pain-video.html">See Video of "Feeling" Prosthetic Hand</a>]</p>
<p>It's not the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/43125-man-gets-first-bionic-hand-that-feels.html">first prosthetic to restore touch</a> to an amputee, but it may provide a more "natural" sensation than earlier devices, said head researcher Dustin Tyler, a biomedical engineer at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio. The device's system has now been in testing for more than two years.</p>
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<h2>It's electrifying</h2>
<p>When Spetic and Vonderhuevel lost their arms, the connections to the muscles and the nerves in their hands were severed. The new prosthetic is covered in <a href="http://www.livescience.com/38302-sensor-artificial-skin-touch-prosthetics.html">pressure sensors</a>, and it works by sending electrical signals from these sensors to the intact nerves in what remains of the patient's arm. The brain interprets these signals to mean the patient has a hand that is touching something.</p>
<p>In the study, a team of surgeons implanted three electrode cuffs around the nerves in Spetic's forearm and two cuffs in Vonderhuevel's arm, and connected the cuffs to the prosthetic arm by wires through the skin.</p>
<p>The cuffs allowed Spetic and Vonderhuevel to feel 19 and 16 distinct points on their prosthetic hands, respectively. For example, one sensation point might correspond to the index finger.</p>
<h2>All natural</h2>
<p>Often when a nerve is stimulated using electrodes, patients report that the sensation feels tingly or prickly, a bit like having pins and needles, Tyler said. But in the new device the engineers varied the pattern and intensity of the stimulation — a technique that hadn't been used before — and found the system was able to deliver sensation that felt much more natural, he said.</p>
<p>"When we first turned the stimulation on, the subject reported that it was the first time he had felt his hand since the accident," Tyler said.</p>
<p>After that first time, the researchers continued to fine-tune the stimulation, to allow the patients to feel different textures. "We don't believe the way we're stimulating the nerves is exactly natural," Tyler said. "But if there's something close, the brain likes to interpret it as something it knows."</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54385508ecad04361e4e1bee-1200-800/ot9hr.jpg" border="0" alt="prosthetic"></p>
<p>They developed the device to the point at which Spetic, while blindfolded, could tell the difference between sandpaper, a smooth surface and a ridged surface with his <a href="http://www.livescience.com/40405-touch-sensitive-prosthetic-limbs-monkey-study.html">touch-sensitive prosthetic hand</a>. He could even distinguish between two different textures on different parts of the hand at the same time, the researchers said.</p>
<p>Vonderhuevel tried holding grapes or a cherry in his prosthetic hand without dropping or breaking them, both with and without the electrical stimulation."When the sensation's on, it's not too hard," he said in a statement. "When it's off, you make a lot of grape juice."</p>
<h2>No pain, all gain</h2>
<p>Both patients suffered from <a href="http://www.livescience.com/33763-phantom-limb-sensation.html">phantom limb pain</a>, a sensation that seems to emanate from the missing limb (Spetic described his pain as a vice crushing his fist). Yet unexpectedly, both Spetic and Vonderhuevel reported that their pain has almost totally disappeared since they started using the new prosthetic, even when the stimulation is turned off.</p>
<p>"We don't know if it's because now that they're getting natural feedback, the brain is reincorporating the [prosthetic] hand, or because of other mechanisms," Tyler said, but "it doesn't appear related to the stimulation directly."</p>
<p>The prosthetic has been working for two-and-a-half years for Spetic and one-and-a-half for Vonderhuevel, while other devices that aim to do the same thing have been used by patients for a month or less.</p>
<p>To date, the patients have only used the device in the lab, but in the future, the researchers would like to develop a fully implantable system, like a pacemaker, which patients could use in their own homes. Tyler also hopes that more sophisticated sensors will be developed that can detect what the prosthetic hand is touching.</p>
<p>While the technology still has to clear regulatory hurdles before it makes it to market, it could be available within five to 10 years, Tyler said.</p>
<p>Follow Tanya Lewis on <a href="https://twitter.com/tanyalewis314">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/117033537877488293678/posts">Google+</a>. Follow us <a href="https://twitter.com/LiveScience">@livescience</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#%21/livescience">Facebook</a> &amp; <a href="https://plus.google.com/101164570444913213957/posts">Google+</a>. Original article on <a href="http://www.livescience.com/48202-prosthetic-hand-restores-natural-touch.html">Live Science</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.livescience.com/38585-body-beautiful-the-5-strangest-prosthetic-limbs.html">Body Beautiful: The 5 Strangest Prosthetic Limbs</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.livescience.com/12954-bionic-humans-artificial-limbs-technologies.html">Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.livescience.com/37590-5-crazy-biotechnologies.html">5 Crazy Technologies That Are Revolutionizing Biotech</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Copyright 2014 <a href="http://www.livescience.com/">LiveScience</a>, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/check-out-this-110k-robotic-hand-2014-1" >This Robotic 'Terminator' Hand Is The Realest Prosthetic We've Seen Yet</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>READ MORE:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/deka-arm-mind-controlled-prosthetic-limb-2014-5" >The Guy Who Invented The Segway Made A Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Arm That Really Works</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/artificial-hand-is-the-first-to-restore-touch-2014-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/ig-nobel-prize-slippery-banana-research-2014-9Studying Why Banana Peels Are Slippery Isn't As Silly As It Seemshttp://www.businessinsider.com/ig-nobel-prize-slippery-banana-research-2014-9
Sat, 27 Sep 2014 15:00:00 -0400Erin Brodwin
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5422e3976da8113930d652eb-800-/2014-09-19t001017z_1260512025_gm1ea9j0mei01_rtrmadp_3_usa-science-ignobelprizes.jpg" border="0" alt="2014 09 19T001017Z_1260512025_GM1EA9J0MEI01_RTRMADP_3_USA SCIENCE IGNOBELPRIZES" width="800"></p><p></p>
<p>They were designed to make people laugh, but the Nobel Prize parody awards known as the Ig Nobels have actually brought attention to some hard-hitting scientific discoveries.</p>
<p>While uncovering the mystery of what makes banana peels so slippery, for example, a team of Japanese physicists <a href="https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/trol/7/3/7_147/_pdf">nailed the fruit's hidden quality</a> that could someday help engineers craft a flexible artificial joint for a prosthetic limb.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the same type of slippery-smooth gels that make banana peels slide also help lubricate our joints. Underneath their brown and yellow exterior, banana skins are lined with hundreds of tiny sacs of the gooey substance, which the scientists dubbed "polysaccharide follicular gel."</p>
<p>We have a similar substance in our own bodies called synovial fluid. It lines the places where our elbows, knees and other joints slip-and-slide and keeps the bones from rubbing together and wearing away. When all those tiny sacs in the banana skin get compressed—or stepped on—they burst, forming a single super-slimy surface prime for slippage.</p>
<p>To land on their finding, the scientists first tested the slipperiness, or friction, of a banana peel on a linoleum plate (to mimic how much a shoe on the fruit would slide on a typical floor) and compared it with how much a shoe would slide on a banana-free floor. A small tool called a "force transducer" was used to measure exactly how much sliding took place.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5422deeb69bedd252cc698d2-679-364/banana%20shoe%20slip.jpeg" border="0" alt="banana shoe slip" width="800"></p>
<p>The shoe on a banana peel was far more slippery (and less frictional, as shown in the chart below), than a plain old floor.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5422deea6bb3f76a6646db62-498-540/friction%20lowered%20w%20banana%20skin.jpeg" border="0" alt="friction lowered w banana skin" width="800"></p>
<p>Not to be outdone by other fruits, the researchers compared the slippery qualities of a banana peel with those of other pieces of produce, including apples, oranges and tangerines.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5422deeb69beddc621c698d8-974-543/chart%20compared%20w%20other%20fruits.jpeg" border="0" alt="chart compared w other fruits" width="800" style="color: #000000;"></p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the banana skins were the least resistant to slippage. Learning more about the material that makes banana peels so slippery could help engineers created a synthetic substance with the same qualities needed to make artificial limbs behave more like real ones.</p>
<p>Who says fruit is just for eating?</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-harvard-hosts-spoof-nobel-awards-for-silly-science-2014-9" >Harvard Hosts Spoof Nobel Awards For Silly Science</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ig-nobel-prize-slippery-banana-research-2014-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/ig-nobel-prize-slippery-banana-research-2014-9Studying Why Banana Peels Are Slippery Isn't As Silly As It Seemshttp://www.businessinsider.com/ig-nobel-prize-slippery-banana-research-2014-9
Wed, 24 Sep 2014 12:38:00 -0400Erin Brodwin
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5422e3976da8113930d652eb-800-/2014-09-19t001017z_1260512025_gm1ea9j0mei01_rtrmadp_3_usa-science-ignobelprizes.jpg" border="0" alt="2014 09 19T001017Z_1260512025_GM1EA9J0MEI01_RTRMADP_3_USA SCIENCE IGNOBELPRIZES" width="800"></p><p></p>
<p>They were designed to make people laugh, but the Nobel Prize parody awards known as the Ig Nobels have actually brought attention to some hard-hitting scientific discoveries.</p>
<p>While uncovering the mystery of what makes banana peels so slippery, for example, a team of Japanese physicists <a href="https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/trol/7/3/7_147/_pdf">nailed the fruit's hidden quality</a> that could someday help engineers craft a flexible artificial joint for a prosthetic limb.</p>
<p>As it turns out, the same type of slippery-smooth gels that make banana peels slide also help lubricate our joints. Underneath their brown and yellow exterior, banana skins are lined with hundreds of tiny sacs of the gooey substance, which the scientists dubbed "polysaccharide follicular gel."</p>
<p>We have a similar substance in our own bodies called synovial fluid. It lines the places where our elbows, knees and other joints slip-and-slide and keeps the bones from rubbing together and wearing away. When all those tiny sacs in the banana skin get compressed—or stepped on—they burst, forming a single super-slimy surface prime for slippage.</p>
<p>To land on their finding, the scientists first tested the slipperiness, or friction, of a banana peel on a linoleum plate (to mimic how much a shoe on the fruit would slide on a typical floor) and compared it with how much a shoe would slide on a banana-free floor. A small tool called a "force transducer" was used to measure exactly how much sliding took place.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5422deeb69bedd252cc698d2-679-364/banana%20shoe%20slip.jpeg" border="0" alt="banana shoe slip" width="800"></p>
<p>The shoe on a banana peel was far more slippery (and less frictional, as shown in the chart below), than a plain old floor.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5422deea6bb3f76a6646db62-498-540/friction%20lowered%20w%20banana%20skin.jpeg" border="0" alt="friction lowered w banana skin" width="800"></p>
<p>Not to be outdone by other fruits, the researchers compared the slippery qualities of a banana peel with those of other pieces of produce, including apples, oranges and tangerines.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5422deeb69beddc621c698d8-974-543/chart%20compared%20w%20other%20fruits.jpeg" border="0" alt="chart compared w other fruits" width="800" style="color: #000000;"></p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the banana skins were the least resistant to slippage. Learning more about the material that makes banana peels so slippery could help engineers created a synthetic substance with the same qualities needed to make artificial limbs behave more like real ones.</p>
<p>Who says fruit is just for eating?</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-harvard-hosts-spoof-nobel-awards-for-silly-science-2014-9" >Harvard Hosts Spoof Nobel Awards For Silly Science</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ig-nobel-prize-slippery-banana-research-2014-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-evolution-of-prosthetic-technology-2014-8Artificial Limbs Have Gone Through An Amazing Evolutionhttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-evolution-of-prosthetic-technology-2014-8
Tue, 19 Aug 2014 10:10:00 -0400Dina Spector
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53f326fe6bb3f71f738f0795-1200-924/egypt-mummys-leather-and-wood-toe.jpg" border="0" alt="Egypt Mummy's leather and wood toe"></p><p>Artificial limbs have come a long way.</p>
<p>Long before the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-man-bertolt-meyer-on-the-future-2014-8">bionic man</a>, prosthetics designed to replace lost body parts offered limited movement and might be crafted out of materials found at hand, like wood and other fibers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"In the past, prosthetics looked very much like what they were replacing," said Jacky Finch, a researcher in the KNH Center for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester. Finch was the lead author of a 2012 study published in the <a href="http://journals.lww.com/jpojournal/Abstract/2012/10000/Biomechanical_Assessment_of_Two_Artificial_Big_Toe.4.aspx" target="_blank">Journal of Prosthetics &amp; <span>Orthotics</span></a>&nbsp;that describes two different artificial toes from ancient Egypt, believed to be the earliest known artificial body parts. "Nowadays, implants are placed in the sensory system to control nerve action, rather than devices attached to the body by straps or artificially powered," she said.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Prosthetics have been around since ancient times, but the technology did not really take off until the two World Wars. A large number of amputees from war injuries tested the ingenuity of engineers and spurred the growth of artificial limb manufacturers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife" target="_blank">London Science Museum's "Brought to Life"</a>&nbsp;exhibit chronicles this period of technological advancement, providing a general overview of the major milestones in artificial body parts.&nbsp;We have republished a selection of these images along with more recent innovations.&nbsp;</p><h3>An artificial toe found on the foot of an Egyptian mummy that dates from somewhere between 950 B.C. and 710 B.C. is believed to be the earliest known example of a prosthetic body part. The wood and leather fake toe, housed at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, is made out of three parts and would have strapped on to the foot of the owner.</h3>
<img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/53e8c1efecad047d0835c05d-400-300/an-artificial-toe-found-on-the-foot-of-an-egyptian-mummy-that-dates-from-somewhere-between-950-bc-and-710-bc-is-believed-to-be-the-earliest-known-example-of-a-prosthetic-body-part-the-wood-and-leather-fake-toe-housed-at-the-egyptian-museum-in-cairo-is-made-out-of-three-parts-and-would-have-strapped-on-to-the-foot-of-the-owner.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>Source: <a href="http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/article/?id=8774" target="_blank">The University of Manchester</a></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>Another artificial big toe, the Greville Chester toe, dates back to before 600 B.C. The prosthetic device is fashioned from a type of paper maché called cartonnage, which is made from a mixture of linen, glue, and plaster. The toe is on display at the British Museum in London.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53e8c2ec6bb3f7337635c062-400-300/another-artificial-big-toe-the-greville-chester-toe-dates-back-to-before-600-bc-the-prosthetic-device-is-fashioned-from-a-type-of-paper-mach-called-cartonnage-which-is-made-from-a-mixture-of-linen-glue-and-plaster-the-toe-is-on-display-at-the-british-museum-in-london.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>Source: <a href="http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/article/?id=8774" target="_blank">University of Manchester</a></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>Until the discovery of the Cairo toe, the earliest tangible evidence of prosthetics was an artificial limb found in a grave in Capua, Italy, dating from 300 B.C. The original bronze leg was destroyed during World War II, but a copy of the leg, shown here, is housed at London's Science Museum. </h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53e7f28269beddf720fc3c8c-400-300/until-the-discovery-of-the-cairo-toe-the-earliest-tangible-evidence-of-prosthetics-was-an-artificial-limb-found-in-a-grave-in-capua-italy-dating-from-300-bc-the-original-bronze-leg-was-destroyed-during-world-war-ii-but-a-copy-of-the-leg-shown-here-is-housed-at-londons-science-museum.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p class="p1"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Source: </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"></span><a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/objects/display.aspx?id=91684" target="_blank">Science Museum London</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p></p>
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-evolution-of-prosthetic-technology-2014-8#an-artificial-hand-from-the-16th-century-consists-of-a-metal-casing-that-would-wrap-around-the-stump-of-a-forearm-held-on-by-metal-or-leather-straps-the-wearer-could-flex-his-or-her-fingers-at-the-large-knuckle-joint-which-did-not-allow-much-other-movement-of-individual-fingers-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/bionics-researcher-hugh-herrs-mountaineering-accident-2014-8Hugh Herr Is A Leading Bionics Researcher — But The Story That Got Him There Is Tragichttp://www.businessinsider.com/bionics-researcher-hugh-herrs-mountaineering-accident-2014-8
Sun, 17 Aug 2014 12:20:00 -0400Leslie Baehr
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53e4ef7969bedd0c48dbcf68-387-516/hugh%20herr%20biomechatronics-1.jpg" border="0" alt="hugh herr biomechatronics 1"></p><p></p>
<p>Before Hugh Herr was known for creating some of the world's most advanced prosthetic limbs, he was known as the kid on his way to becoming one of the best rock climbers in the world.</p>
<p>By age 8, "Hugh had scaled a face of the 11,627-foot Mount Temple in southern Alberta," <a href="http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2009/02/best-foot-forward-february/2/">Eric Adelson wrote in Boston Magazine</a>. Later, he began climbing without a rope, ascending tough climbing routes, some of which no adult had ever done before, according to Adelson. By the time he was a teenager, Herr was one of the top rock climbers on the East Coast, according to <a href="http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/climber-hugh-herr-honored-by-esquire-magazine">Rock and Ice</a> magazine.</p>
<p>In January 1982, Herr, then 17, and a friend, Jeff Batzer, age 20, set out to climb Mount Washington. What began as an ascent in reasonable weather suddenly transformed into a trudge through 100-mile-per-hour winds with an intense minus 110&nbsp;Fahrenheit windchill, Adelson wrote.</p>
<p>Disorientation caught them, and after Herr took a fall in a river, the two were stranded on the "wilderness side of Mount Washington," Herr told Jothy Rosenberg in the show "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6_0nI5U-Qg">Who Says I Can't</a>."</p>
<p>"We survived by building snow caves and hugging each other to stay warm," he said.</p>
<p>Eventually, the cold took over. "When you're hypothermic, one cannot think clearly. So even though we were approaching four days, we thought we were still in the same 24-hour day," Herr told Rosenberg.</p>
<p>Hypothermia gave way to surrender. "We were no longer able to walk. We just gave up all hope and we actually stopped hugging each other to stay warm," Herr told Rosenberg. "We just reasoned the sooner we die, the better," he said.</p>
<p>They were eventually discovered by a snowshoer, and that evening they were airlifted to a hospital. Weeks later, Herr lost his legs to frostbite. While the loss of a limb was traumatic, Herr was more upset by the death of a volunteer lost in an avalanche while looking for the boys. Herr said: "That information, along with the whole trauma of the ordeal, was very, very difficult to deal with."</p>
<p>"That was the No. 1&nbsp; thing that got him to be so passionate about making a difference," his sister told Rosenberg.</p>
<h2 class="p1">14 Below</h2>
<p>Herr woke up after surgery 14 pounds lighter, missing everything below both knees, Adelson wrote. "A nurse told me that I would be able to walk with these things called artificial legs," Herr said in a clip from the documentary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkw_OJ2nto4">Ascent</a>.</p>
<p>Walk, not climb, they said.</p>
<p>He was given crude plaster of Paris legs and eventually acrylic ones, Adelson wrote.</p>
<p>"They were far more rudimentary than I had hoped they would be," Herr told <a href="http://vimeo.com/74104041">REEL Entrepreneurs</a>. "I basically said, 'This is it? Are you kidding me?'"</p>
<p>Despite doctor's orders, he took to local mountains. Adelson wrote:</p>
<blockquote class="blockquote">He made rock cliffs his first lab, chiseling and whittling his limbs right there in the woods and on the rock face as he went. He noticed his body got colder and achier as he climbed but his legs did not. He was able to move faster and higher than before, in part because the amputations had left him 14 pounds lighter. And up there on the mountain that day, Herr made a leap that changed his life and may someday change yours: Why can't fake limbs outperform real ones?</blockquote>
<p>Herr realized that there was no reason that his new feet needed to mimic his old ones. He could cut off a heel to reduce weight, increase his legs' stiffness where it was useful, add spikes for ice climbing, or make feet narrow enough to stick in small cracks.<img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53ea394aecad04817b0b3929/hugh herr climbing .gif" border="0" alt="hugh herr climbing ">"My climbing colleagues first labeled me as 'courageous,' which is always very demeaning," Herr said.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53e4efdd6da811db1bc7f9b3-441-600/149263_11039_l-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Hugh Herr"></p>
<p>After a year, Herr's climbing was "better than ever," according to Rosenberg.</p>
<p>"I began ascending rock faces that I actually could not have ascended before the accident with biological legs," he said in Ascent.</p>
<p>Herr was good, but many thought he was too good. "The second I became competitive, I became a threat," Herr told Rosenberg. "I had a few people threaten to amputate their own limbs to achieve the same advantage," he said.</p>
<p>He couldn't stop laughing. "It was music to my ears," he said.</p>
<h2>Re-Education</h2>
<p>Herr was always an intensely curious child. He could sit for hours staring into space, rocking back and forth, just thinking, he told Boston Magazine. "I had an intense ability to hold a thought," he said.</p>
<p>Still, he had never been "much of a student" in high school, according to Rosenberg.</p>
<p>"My goal prior to the accident was to be the best mountain climber in the world. I had no interest in even going to college," Herr told REEL Entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>After the success with his artificial climbing limbs, Herr decided to attend college where he enrolled in math and science courses. He was on a mission, he told Rosenberg, "to advance technology not only for myself, but for everyone."</p>
<p>In college Herr had his "intellectual birth," falling in love with physics, he told Boston Magazine. He eventually began working with a local prosthesist in effort to improve how prosthetic legs attached to their wearers, Adelson wrote.</p>
<p>Herr went on to get his Master's in mechanical engineering from MIT, a PhD in biophysics from Harvard, and then a postdoc back at MIT.</p>
<h2 class="p1">Extreme Bionics</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/53cfef556bb3f71d67da790b-1200-858/rtr3lnzy.jpg" border="0" alt="Hugh Herr">Today, Herr is the director of biomechatronics at MIT, where he established the Center For Extreme Bionics, which concentrates on lower body prosthetics like knees, ankles, and hips.</p>
<p>"The mission of the center is to put forth fundamental science and technological capability that will allow the biomechatronic and regenerative repair of humans across a broad range of brain and body disabilities," Herr said at the <a href="h_herr_the_new_bionics_that_let_us_run_climb_and_dance/transcript#t-717161">most recent TED conference</a>.</p>
<p>At that conference he gave "the first demonstration of a running gait under neural command," showing off a pair of <a href="http://www.biom.com">BiOM</a> prosthetics. The prosthetics have the ability to interact with both the body and the surrounding environment in, perhaps, the most natural way yet.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/53e3c4fa6bb3f7e156dd5fcf/herr3.gif" border="0" alt="Herr3">The center also designs <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hugh-herr-robotic-exoskeleton-boots-2014-5">products that improve movement</a> of those with biological limbs including "the first exoskeleton in history that actually augments human walking," which you can see below.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hugh-herr-robotic-exoskeleton-boots-2014-5">The skeleton</a> so severely reduces energy use that "when a normal, healthy person wears the device for 40 minutes and then takes it off, their own biological legs feel ridiculously heavy and awkward," he said at the TED conference.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53e3c3ceeab8eae929dd5fcf/herr2.gif" border="0" alt="Herr2">But Herr and his team are far from finished. "We want to go a step further," he said. They want to completely close the loop between man and machine so that those missing limbs "will not only have synthetic limbs that move like flesh and bone, but actually feel like flesh and bone."</p>
<p>Today, they continue to push the boundaries of what prosthetics can do.</p>
<p>"We the people need not accept our limitations, but can transcend disability through technological innovation," Herr said at TED. "Indeed, through fundamental advances in bionics in this century, we will set the technological foundation for an enhanced human experience, and we will end disability."</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-incredible-applications-of-bionics-in-sports-2014-7" >These Pictures Show How Shockingly Good Bionics In Sports Are Now</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bionics-researcher-hugh-herrs-mountaineering-accident-2014-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-man-bertolt-meyer-on-the-future-2014-8'Bionic Man' Says We Could All Want Artificial Limbs In The Futurehttp://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-man-bertolt-meyer-on-the-future-2014-8
Sun, 17 Aug 2014 09:07:00 -0400Katie Jennings
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53e24f3f6da811935520f4f5-1200-800/ap100512019587.jpg" border="0" alt="berthold meyer bionic hand prosthesis"></p><p>Bertolt Meyer was born without a lower left arm.</p>
<p>He started wearing his first prosthesis, or artificial arm, when he was 3 months old. Now at age 37, Meyer wears the futuristic i-limb — a high-tech bionic arm that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.</p>
<p>Aesthetics aside, the i-limb is highly functional. It's a myoelectric prosthesis,<strong>&nbsp;</strong>which uses electrical signals from the muscles inside the residual limb to control the prosthesis.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Two electrodes lay on the bare skin of the residual limb of his lower left arm. "If you flex muscles in your arm, that will change the electrical pattern on the surface of the arm and these patterns are picked up by the electrodes that lie in the prosthesis," Meyer told Business Insider.</p>
<p>A microcontroller then amplifies the signal and the i-limb responds. If he flexes his upper arm muscles one way, the i-limb opens; another way, it closes.</p>
<p>In his professional life, Meyer is a professor of psychology at the Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany, where his research focuses on diversity.</p>
<p>In 2013, he was featured in the <a href="http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/sc/web/show/3378516/the-incredible-bionic-man#the-incredible-bionic-man" target="_blank">Smithsonian Channel documentary "The Incredible Bionic Man,</a>" which brought together leading researchers and roboticists to create the first "Bionic Man," assembled from the latest technology in prosthetics and artificial organs. Meyer's face was even used as the model for the man.</p>
<p>Meyer spoke with Business Insider about how his personal experience has motivated his research, how technology is changing perceptions of disability and the ethical questions surrounding the future of prosthetics.</p>
<p><em>The below interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.&nbsp;</em></p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">Business Insider: What motivated you to study social psychology?</strong></p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/53dbb1986bb3f70d1264c7ca-1200-924/ap167516060926 (1).jpg" border="0" alt="bertolt meyer bionic man"></p>
<p><strong>Bertolt Meyer:</strong> Well, I guess research is also always a little bit of "me" search. So I'd say one of the factors that influenced me is the experience of being different.</p>
<p>If you are born with a very visible physical disability, you learn very quickly what it's like to be treated differently and how it is to have people stare at you — children can be very cruel sometimes. I wondered where these things come from and how they affected us.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>BI:</strong> <strong>Was there a moment in your childhood when you understood that you were "different"?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> One early moment I can remember was in primary school, probably in second or third grade.</p>
<p>I was in a discussion with a classmate of mine and he asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"&nbsp;</p>
<p>I said, "I want to become a firefighter."</p>
<p>He said, "You can't do that, you only have one arm."</p>
<p>And I had never thought about that. I was devastated at that moment and that was something that really stuck.</p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">BI: In 2009 you started wearing the i-limb. Can you speak from your own experience how technology like the i-limb can change perceptions of disability?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> From personal experience, when you only have one arm, people usually meet you with a sense of pity. And people also kind of give you the feeling that they don't want to talk about it and they avoid gazing at you and so forth. It's uncomfortable at best — it's like an elephant in the room.</p>
<p>Now with the i-limb, that has completely changed. People have started to treat me in a different way.</p>
<p>It has changed to "oh wow, what a cool hand, can I have a look?" Especially kids, they're like "Wow a robot hand. Do you have super powers?"</p>
<p>Aside from the functional improvement that you get with such a prosthesis, what I also got was a psychological benefit. It drastically increased my self-esteem.</p>
<p><strong>BI: And what about from an academic perspective?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> I think these devices have the potential to change commonly held stereotypes towards people with a disability. One important dimension of stereotypes is how we associate people from stereotyped groups with competence.</p>
<p>For example, when we talk about disabled people, we usually see disabled people as incompetent people —meaning that these people are unable to act out their intentions. Whereas people who we perceive to be "like us" or people who we perceive as idols, we usually see as very, very competent.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Technology — high-tech and bionics — inherently evokes a feeling of competence. And what you get when you blend a person with a piece of high-tech is something that stereotypically is very competent.&nbsp;</p>
<p>To illustrate, I would like to use the example of Oscar Pistorius — before he shot his girlfriend.</p>
<p>When Pistorius tried to compete in the able-bodied Olympics, some people were wondering whether he had an unfair advantage. And some journalists talked about "techno-doping."</p>
<p>I can't judge whether he had an unfair advantage or not. But it was interesting because the one thing that all the talk about him did not convey was stereotypes of incompetence. It was is he "too competent" — is he almost a threat to the able-bodied athletes. And that is a drastic shift. Seeing someone with a disability as a threat, because a disability suddenly gives a person a potential: an interface to a piece of superior technology. &nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>BI: Do you find that you use your right hand and the i-limb interchangeably?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> No. For that the i-limb isn't good enough.</p>
<p>The problem with the i-limb, and any other fully dexterous prosthesis, is not the way it's engineered. We now have hands where at least theoretically every joint could move and could do so independently of every other joint in the hand.</p>
<p>The biggest challenge that we face today with the hand prosthesis is the interface between the prosthesis and the body. If you have dozens of little motors in an artificial hand that can mimic any movement that your natural hand can do, where should the delicate control signals for all of these motors come from? How do you connect that to the nerve system? And that is a problem that is still not solved.</p>
<p>So, no, I can't play the piano with my left hand. But one thing I can tell you is before I got the i-limb, I almost exclusively relied on my right sound hand for doing almost everything. This caused my right shoulder to really start to hurt because I overstrained my right arm and shoulder. Since I started wearing the i-limb, that issue is completely gone.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>BI: In the past, you've discussed how the i-limb has a Bluetooth, meaning there's a wireless connection to your iPhone. Have you been worried about someone being able to hack into your i-limb?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> The very first version of the app that connects the iPhone to the i-limb didn't have a passcode, so anyone could establish the connection. Now they've changed that. In order to pair the app with the hand you need a passcode and you need to type in the serial number of the hand (which is printed on the hand) in order to establish the connection.</p>
<p>I haven't really personally worried about someone hacking into my i-limb. Also there is a hardware off switch on the side of my socket. Even if something would go weird, I could switch it off.&nbsp;</p>
<p>It's more a conceptual worry that I have. That is if we continue to upgrade human bodies with technology and this technology is connected to the internet that does give the word hacking a new meaning. There are more stark examples than the potential of making another person's hand move.</p>
<p>The most extreme example I've come across was mentioned by an acquaintance of mine, <a href="http://www.marcgoodman.net/about/" target="_blank">Marc Goodman</a>, who does cyber security strategy. [Some diabetics use electronic insulin pumps to manage their blood glucose levels.] And these pumps are continuously connected to the patients bloodstream and give off insulin at certain doses and in certain intervals. Now these things also have Bluetooth built in. And somebody has actually built a device that sends out a Bluetooth signal that causes these insulin pumps to give off lethal doses of insulin. So suddenly with a hack you can kill someone.&nbsp;</p>
<p>So don't just think of prosthesis, think of these insulin pumps, pacemakers, artificial organs that we might see in the future. Things like that we need to start worrying about security. Because again in a connected world these developments really give the word hacking a new meaning.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>BI: One of the issues raised with the Bionic Man documentary was this idea of how much of a human could be replaced and still be considered human. Did your thoughts change after making the documentary?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> The question of whether someone or something is human or not does not depend on how many parts of the body we replace. In the end, it comes down to whether someone has a self-aware conscious.</p>
<p>The one thing that I'm really less worried about is the artificial intelligence. I do remember in the early '90s there were people who predicted that we'll have natural language interaction with computers by the year 2000. I learned from the Bionic Man project that we're still very far away from that. So actually my fears that some kind of machines will take over the world have lessened.</p>
<p>What I started to really think about is a question of enhancement. If you lose a limb, an artificial limb will not restore your functionality back to 100 percent. But I really wonder what will happen if — and it's a big if, it's not a given — we managed to invent an artificial limb or organ that's actually better than the natural counterpart.&nbsp;</p>
<p>At the moment, an artificial hand like the i-limb, doesn't cater to people with two hands because it can't offer them anything they can't do. It only caters to a very small niche market — the very few thousand people who lost a hand.</p>
<p>But if you had an artificial limb that would be better than a healthy limb, then you'd suddenly have a product that emerges form a niche market to a mass market because suddenly it appeals to everyone.&nbsp;</p>
<p>I'm not going to say that everyone is going to chop off their hands, but already we see body modification people who experiment with implanting little magnets into their hands to give them a sixth sense for magnetic fields. So if we already have extreme people willing to do that today, I'm pretty sure we'll have people who are willing to replace healthy limbs with artificial ones if these offer more functionality.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Think of plastic surgery. In certain parts of society, it's already accepted to alter a healthy body in order to increase its aesthetic appearance, why not the same concept for functionality?</p>
<p>It will make products more appealing to a larger market. There's a lot of money to be made. And I'm just a little worried that with such projects some corporations might leave the ethical issues to the side.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>GAME CHANGERS: &nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/game-changers" >Read more in the series</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7" >Humans Are Headed Down A Path That Will Allow Us To Supercharge The Brain</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-man-bertolt-meyer-on-the-future-2014-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7Brain Hacking Is Having Incredible Effects And It's Just Getting Startedhttp://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7
Fri, 15 Aug 2014 09:18:00 -0400Business Insider
<p><img class="full" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/530e0072eab8eadc59042c81-800-/screen%20shot%202014-02-26%20at%209.55.09%20am.png" border="0" alt="brain computer interface" width="800"></p><p>With a jolt of electricity, you might be able to enter a flow state that allows you to learn a new skill twice as fast, solve problems that have mystified you for hours, or even win a sharpshooting competition.</p>
<p>And this just scratches the surface in terms of what we might be able to do to improve cognition as our understanding of the brain improves. With an implanted chip, the possibilities might be close to limitless.</p>
<p>Researchers think that as we learn more about the brain, we'll be able to use electricity to boost focus, memory, learning, mathematical ability, and pattern recognition. Electric stimulation may also clear away depression and stave off cognitive decline. We'll eventually even implant computer chips that allow us to directly search the web for information or even download new skills — like Neo learning Kung-fu in The Matrix.</p>
<p>We're heading down a path that will allow us to supercharge the brain.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The key is decoding how the brain works. That's the hurdle in the way, and the one that billions of dollars in research are going towards right now.</p>
<p>"I don't think there's any doubt we'll eventually understand the brain,"&nbsp;says Gary Marcus,&nbsp;a professor of psychology at New York University, and an editor of the upcoming book “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Future-Brain-Leading-Neuroscientists/dp/069116276X/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_1" target="_blank">The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World’s Leading Neuroscientists</a>.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>"The big question is how long it's going to take," he says.</p>
<h3>Repairing And Enhancing</h3>
<p>Most of the technologies that could enhance our ability to think play another important role too. They may provide the keys to stopping cognitive decline, treating mental illness, and even restoring sight to the blind or hearing to the deaf.</p>
<p>Some of these techniques are already being used in that way.</p>
<p>Stimulating the brain with electricity to treat ailments has a long history. The ancient Greeks and Romans, including Pliny the Elder, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627314003894" target="_blank">shocked themselves with the Atlantic torpedo ray</a> to treat headaches. Treatments like transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) now show promise as a means of treating depression, epilepsy, and other drug-resistant brain disorders, according to Michael Weisend, a neuroscientist at Wright State Research Institution.</p>
<p>And neural implants show potentially far more possibilities. They already can transmit sound to the brain to provide a type of hearing for some deaf people. When connected to a tiny camera they can even capture shape and motion and transmit them to the brain, providing a type of vision for certain blind patients.</p>
<p>Knowing how these techniques are used medically shows what we understand about the brain now — but what's really fascinating is what this research will allow us to do in the future.</p>
<h3><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53dff8cc69bedd845ee2ba58-1200-1200/transcranial%20direct%20current%20stimulation_02.jpg" border="0" alt="Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation" width="800">A Jolt To The Outside Of The Head</h3>
<p>First you strap a small device to your head, making sure that its electrodes are lined up in just the right way, and then flip a switch. A small jolt of electricity is delivered to your brain. All of a sudden, you feel a slight buzz that soon fades. Fogginess and anxiety clear away — you're suddenly able to solve puzzles that stumped you before, you can discern patterns out of noise, and your memory works significantly better.&nbsp;</p>
<p>According to neuroscientists and a large community of DIY brain hackers, that's not science fiction — its already the reality of TDCS. Many researchers still have questions about how effective brain stimulation will be in the long term, but there's a lot of promising research so far.</p>
<p>What this does is provide a fairly broad but small dose of electricity to the brain, affecting millions of cells, and enhancing performance along the way.</p>
<p>"TDCS&nbsp;is more of a shotgun approach than a scalpel approach," says Weisend. They try to target a region and make sure as much electricity reaches that region as possible, but a broad beam is sent out along the way. Luckily, most results so far have shown that in supervised lab conditions, these techniques are safe.</p>
<p>So far, this technique shows the most promise for improving memory, pattern recognition, and vigilance — the ability to pay attention — according to&nbsp;Weisend. His team has tested or demonstrated TDCS on more than 500 people, <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana/" target="_blank">including Radiolab's Jad Abumrad</a>, and among other things, they've shown that people learning a new skill can learn twice as much as people who receive the same training but no stimulation.</p>
<p>Other studies have shown that electrical stimulation can provide the same energy boost as giving someone a cup of coffee. Researchers have found that people who undergo brain zapping sessions can <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101104154209.htm" target="_blank">enhance their mathematical abilities</a> for up to six months. The increased focus it provides can even <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap-your-brain-into-the-zone-fast-track-to-pure-focus.html" target="_blank">give people a huge boost</a> in U.S. military sniper training simulations. The military has also found that it can help pilots better <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amping-up-brain-function/" target="_blank">pick out targets from radar images</a>.</p>
<p>Promising results and cheap, easy-to-build devices have made battery-powered brain stimulators a favorite of the DIY community, especially for people interested in boosting their own brain power and for video gamers, who can use any boost in focus, vigilance, and the ability to see the next guy before he sees you.&nbsp;</p>
<p>These self-experimenters give neuroscientists like Weisend pause, however, as they may not be as careful as research teams and also can create unrealistic expectations for the technology.</p>
<p>"What we know is that changing the way a brain functions can make it perform better," says Weisend, but he also says that "the most interesting days for TDCS are definitely down the road" — when we better understand how it works.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>A Chip In Your Skull</h3>
<p>There are ways to have a much more direct impact on the brain than the broad one external electrical stimulation applies — if you are willing to put a sort of computer chip inside your skull.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Those same implants that are already used for vision and hearing could be used to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-implants-will-give-us-superpowers-2014-4#comments" target="_blank">enhance those senses</a> far beyond normal as technology improves and as we better learn how to communicate that information to the brain.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But one of the first neural enhancements that we might see is one that improves memory, according to Marcus.</p>
<p>Already, the military is using research into neural implants and electrodes implanted into the brain to restore damaged memory in people with trauma. Marcus says we should eventually be able to build implants that extend memory and make it more reliable — people are <a href="http://mobile.extremetech.com/latest/221694-us-scientists-push-ahead-with-memory-boosting-brain-implants-but-we-still-have-to-crack-the-brains-code-first" target="_blank">trying to do it already</a>. It's hard to say when we'll be able to do that — maybe not this decade, Marcus says, but perhaps the one after that.</p>
<p>First, we'll have to figure out how the brain codes away and stores memory.</p>
<p>That's the hurdle for a lot of this research, and it's hard to predict when we'll jump it. But <a href="http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jun2014/od-05.htm" target="_blank">governments</a> and <a href="http://www.alleninstitute.org/" target="_blank">research institutions</a> around the world have set modeling and understanding the brain as one of the top scientific priorities of our time.</p>
<p>Once we know how the brain changes as it stores information and implants a new skill, a brain implant could mimic that effect, making it possible to actually download the brain changes that would come with practice. A neuroscience and technological challenge like that may be far away — but we're talking about 50 year projects, not 500 year projects, says Marcus.</p>
<h3>What's Next</h3>
<p>No matter what type of technique we talk about, experts agree that aren't quite there yet — though we're a lot closer than most people think.</p>
<p>With regard to TDCS, Weisend thinks it'll be incorporated into training programs (the military could save billions of dollars if they could cut training time short),&nbsp;treatment for drug resistant brain disease, and maybe in professional occupations that demand a lot of focus and where lives are on the line.</p>
<p>Marcus is excited about the possibilities of neural implants, but he also thinks that our perspective on all this will be transformed as we learn more about how the mind works. "I think that the techniques we have now are going to look really crude in 30 years," he says.</p>
<p>But it's going to happen.&nbsp;And the world is going to change with it.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-technology-human-cyborgs-2014-7" >The Bionic Age Is No Longer A Distant Dream. It's Here.</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>Game Changers:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/game-changers" >Read more in this series.</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/bionics-researcher-hugh-herrs-mountaineering-accident-2014-8The Tragic Story That Created A Bionics Superstarhttp://www.businessinsider.com/bionics-researcher-hugh-herrs-mountaineering-accident-2014-8
Wed, 13 Aug 2014 11:17:00 -0400Leslie Baehr
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53e4ef7969bedd0c48dbcf68-387-516/hugh%20herr%20biomechatronics-1.jpg" border="0" alt="hugh herr biomechatronics 1"></p><p></p>
<p>Before Hugh Herr was known for creating some of the world's most advanced prosthetic limbs, he was known as the kid on his way to becoming one of the best rock climbers in the world.</p>
<p>By age 8, "Hugh had scaled a face of the 11,627-foot Mount Temple in southern Alberta," <a href="http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2009/02/best-foot-forward-february/2/">Eric Adelson wrote in Boston Magazine</a>. Later, he began climbing without a rope, ascending tough climbing routes, some of which no adult had ever done before, according to Adelson. By the time he was a teenager, Herr was one of the top rock climbers on the East Coast, according to <a href="http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/climber-hugh-herr-honored-by-esquire-magazine">Rock and Ice</a> magazine.</p>
<p>In January 1982, Herr, then 17, and a friend, Jeff Batzer, age 20, set out to climb Mount Washington. What began as an ascent in reasonable weather suddenly transformed into a trudge through 100-mile-per-hour winds with an intense minus 110&nbsp;Fahrenheit windchill, Adelson wrote.</p>
<p>Disorientation caught them, and after Herr took a fall in a river, the two were stranded on the "wilderness side of Mount Washington," Herr told Jothy Rosenberg in the show "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6_0nI5U-Qg">Who Says I Can't</a>."</p>
<p>"We survived by building snow caves and hugging each other to stay warm," he said.</p>
<p>Eventually, the cold took over. "When you're hypothermic, one cannot think clearly. So even though we were approaching four days, we thought we were still in the same 24-hour day," Herr told Rosenberg.</p>
<p>Hypothermia gave way to surrender. "We were no longer able to walk. We just gave up all hope and we actually stopped hugging each other to stay warm," Herr told Rosenberg. "We just reasoned the sooner we die, the better," he said.</p>
<p>They were eventually discovered by a snowshoer, and that evening they were airlifted to a hospital. Weeks later, Herr lost his legs to frostbite. While the loss of a limb was traumatic, Herr was more upset by the death of a volunteer lost in an avalanche while looking for the boys. Herr said: "That information, along with the whole trauma of the ordeal, was very, very difficult to deal with."</p>
<p>"That was the No. 1&nbsp; thing that got him to be so passionate about making a difference," his sister told Rosenberg.</p>
<h2 class="p1">14 Below</h2>
<p>Herr woke up after surgery 14 pounds lighter, missing everything below both knees, Adelson wrote. "A nurse told me that I would be able to walk with these things called artificial legs," Herr said in a clip from the documentary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkw_OJ2nto4">Ascent</a>.</p>
<p>Walk, not climb, they said.</p>
<p>He was given crude plaster of Paris legs and eventually acrylic ones, Adelson wrote.</p>
<p>"They were far more rudimentary than I had hoped they would be," Herr told <a href="http://vimeo.com/74104041">REEL Entrepreneurs</a>. "I basically said, 'This is it? Are you kidding me?'"</p>
<p>Despite doctor's orders, he took to local mountains. Adelson wrote:</p>
<blockquote class="blockquote">He made rock cliffs his first lab, chiseling and whittling his limbs right there in the woods and on the rock face as he went. He noticed his body got colder and achier as he climbed but his legs did not. He was able to move faster and higher than before, in part because the amputations had left him 14 pounds lighter. And up there on the mountain that day, Herr made a leap that changed his life and may someday change yours: Why can't fake limbs outperform real ones?</blockquote>
<p>Herr realized that there was no reason that his new feet needed to mimic his old ones. He could cut off a heel to reduce weight, increase his legs' stiffness where it was useful, add spikes for ice climbing, or make feet narrow enough to stick in small cracks.<img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53ea394aecad04817b0b3929/hugh herr climbing .gif" border="0" alt="hugh herr climbing ">"My climbing colleagues first labeled me as 'courageous,' which is always very demeaning," Herr said.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53e4efdd6da811db1bc7f9b3-441-600/149263_11039_l-1.jpg" border="0" alt="Hugh Herr"></p>
<p>After a year, Herr's climbing was "better than ever," according to Rosenberg.</p>
<p>"I began ascending rock faces that I actually could not have ascended before the accident with biological legs," he said in Ascent.</p>
<p>Herr was good, but many thought he was too good. "The second I became competitive, I became a threat," Herr told Rosenberg. "I had a few people threaten to amputate their own limbs to achieve the same advantage," he said.</p>
<p>He couldn't stop laughing. "It was music to my ears," he said.</p>
<h2>Re-Education</h2>
<p>Herr was always an intensely curious child. He could sit for hours staring into space, rocking back and forth, just thinking, he told Boston Magazine. "I had an intense ability to hold a thought," he said.</p>
<p>Still, he had never been "much of a student" in high school, according to Rosenberg.</p>
<p>"My goal prior to the accident was to be the best mountain climber in the world. I had no interest in even going to college," Herr told REEL Entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>After the success with his artificial climbing limbs, Herr decided to attend college where he enrolled in math and science courses. He was on a mission, he told Rosenberg, "to advance technology not only for myself, but for everyone."</p>
<p>In college Herr had his "intellectual birth," falling in love with physics, he told Boston Magazine. He eventually began working with a local prosthesist in effort to improve how prosthetic legs attached to their wearers, Adelson wrote.</p>
<p>Herr went on to get his Master's in mechanical engineering from MIT, a PhD in biophysics from Harvard, and then a postdoc back at MIT.</p>
<h2 class="p1">Extreme Bionics</h2>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/53cfef556bb3f71d67da790b-1200-858/rtr3lnzy.jpg" border="0" alt="Hugh Herr">Today, Herr is the director of biomechatronics at MIT, where he established the Center For Extreme Bionics, which concentrates on lower body prosthetics like knees, ankles, and hips.</p>
<p>"The mission of the center is to put forth fundamental science and technological capability that will allow the biomechatronic and regenerative repair of humans across a broad range of brain and body disabilities," Herr said at the <a href="h_herr_the_new_bionics_that_let_us_run_climb_and_dance/transcript#t-717161">most recent TED conference</a>.</p>
<p>At that conference he gave "the first demonstration of a running gait under neural command," showing off a pair of <a href="http://www.biom.com">BiOM</a> prosthetics. The prosthetics have the ability to interact with both the body and the surrounding environment in, perhaps, the most natural way yet.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/53e3c4fa6bb3f7e156dd5fcf/herr3.gif" border="0" alt="Herr3">The center also designs <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hugh-herr-robotic-exoskeleton-boots-2014-5">products that improve movement</a> of those with biological limbs including "the first exoskeleton in history that actually augments human walking," which you can see below.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hugh-herr-robotic-exoskeleton-boots-2014-5">The skeleton</a> so severely reduces energy use that "when a normal, healthy person wears the device for 40 minutes and then takes it off, their own biological legs feel ridiculously heavy and awkward," he said at the TED conference.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53e3c3ceeab8eae929dd5fcf/herr2.gif" border="0" alt="Herr2">But Herr and his team are far from finished. "We want to go a step further," he said. They want to completely close the loop between man and machine so that those missing limbs "will not only have synthetic limbs that move like flesh and bone, but actually feel like flesh and bone."</p>
<p>Today, they continue to push the boundaries of what prosthetics can do.</p>
<p>"We the people need not accept our limitations, but can transcend disability through technological innovation," Herr said at TED. "Indeed, through fundamental advances in bionics in this century, we will set the technological foundation for an enhanced human experience, and we will end disability."</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-incredible-applications-of-bionics-in-sports-2014-7" >These Pictures Show How Shockingly Good Bionics In Sports Are Now</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bionics-researcher-hugh-herrs-mountaineering-accident-2014-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-incredible-applications-of-bionics-in-sports-2014-7These Pictures Show How Shockingly Good Bionics In Sports Are Nowhttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-incredible-applications-of-bionics-in-sports-2014-7
Sat, 09 Aug 2014 11:00:00 -0400Leslie Baehr
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53cfe8786da8117b5a089522-1200-800/457733749.jpg" border="0" alt="AMY PURDY"></p><p>Prosthetic limbs have been around for centuries, but the prosthetics of today don't look like those from your grandfather's day.</p>
<p>These days limbs can be bionic, almost seamlessly blending in with their wearer in form <em>and</em> function. Limbs can <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/boston-bombing-victim-dances-at-ted-2014-2014-3">incorporate electronic components</a> that allow the limb to respond to their wearers similar to a biological limb. They can be shaped for different purposes or customized to their wearer's specifications.</p>
<p>It is enough of a task to make artificial legs that can walk naturally or arms that can grasp, but what happens when their wearer wants those limbs to be able to swim, climb, dance, or surf?</p>
<p>We sought out some of today's most amazing athletes who are pushing the idea of what it means to mix the biological with the technological and take their sports to new limits.</p><h3>Some people have become famous for taking prosthetics to the next level. In 1996, Aimee Mullins was the first amputee to compete on an NCAA track team, setting multiple world records.</h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/53dbbda969beddf64ef367e7-400-300/some-people-have-become-famous-for-taking-prosthetics-to-the-next-level-in-1996-aimee-mullins-was-the-first-amputee-to-compete-on-an-ncaa-track-team-setting-multiple-world-records.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>Source: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhJ4bPtqNjM">ABC</a></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>Running prosthetics, like the ones Mullins used and the ones seen below, take the shape of a cheetah leg. They have no heel and can store and release energy like a spring. But for other athletes, it is not always about putting one foot in front of the other ...</h3>
<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53dbbe6becad04a74b437f52-400-300/running-prosthetics-like-the-ones-mullins-used-and-the-ones-seen-below-take-the-shape-of-a-cheetah-leg-they-have-no-heel-and-can-store-and-release-energy-like-a-spring-but-for-other-athletes-it-is-not-always-about-putting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/sports/olympics/02cheetah.html?ref=sports&amp;_r=0">The New York Times</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/no-advantage-to-being-an-amputee-a-defense-of-oscar-pistoriuss-prostheses/260878/">The Atlantic</a></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>... at least not in the way you'd think.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53cfea836da811256c08951c-400-300/-at-least-not-in-the-way-youd-think.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-incredible-applications-of-bionics-in-sports-2014-7#here-amy-purdy-of-the-us-paralympic-snowboard-team-changes-out-her-everyday-prosthetic-legs-for-her-snowboarding-ones-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7Humans Are Heading Down A Path That Will Allow Us To Supercharge The Brainhttp://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7
Sat, 09 Aug 2014 09:01:00 -0400Business Insider
<p><img class="full" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/530e0072eab8eadc59042c81-800-/screen%20shot%202014-02-26%20at%209.55.09%20am.png" border="0" alt="brain computer interface" width="800"></p><p>With a jolt of electricity, you might be able to enter a flow state that allows you to learn a new skill twice as fast, solve problems that have mystified you for hours, or even win a sharpshooting competition.</p>
<p>And this just scratches the surface in terms of what we might be able to do to improve cognition as our understanding of the brain improves. With an implanted chip, the possibilities might be close to limitless.</p>
<p>Researchers think that as we learn more about the brain, we'll be able to use electricity to boost focus, memory, learning, mathematical ability, and pattern recognition. Electric stimulation may also clear away depression and stave off cognitive decline. We'll eventually even implant computer chips that allow us to directly search the web for information or even download new skills — like Neo learning Kung-fu in The Matrix.</p>
<p>We're heading down a path that will allow us to supercharge the brain.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The key is decoding how the brain works. That's the hurdle in the way, and the one that billions of dollars in research are going towards right now.</p>
<p>"I don't think there's any doubt we'll eventually understand the brain,"&nbsp;says Gary Marcus,&nbsp;a professor of psychology at New York University, and an editor of the upcoming book “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Future-Brain-Leading-Neuroscientists/dp/069116276X/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_1" target="_blank">The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World’s Leading Neuroscientists</a>.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>"The big question is how long it's going to take," he says.</p>
<h3>Repairing And Enhancing</h3>
<p>Most of the technologies that could enhance our ability to think play another important role too. They may provide the keys to stopping cognitive decline, treating mental illness, and even restoring sight to the blind or hearing to the deaf.</p>
<p>Some of these techniques are already being used in that way.</p>
<p>Stimulating the brain with electricity to treat ailments has a long history. The ancient Greeks and Romans, including Pliny the Elder, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627314003894" target="_blank">shocked themselves with the Atlantic torpedo ray</a> to treat headaches. Treatments like transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) now show promise as a means of treating depression, epilepsy, and other drug-resistant brain disorders, according to Michael Weisend, a neuroscientist at Wright State Research Institution.</p>
<p>And neural implants show potentially far more possibilities. They already can transmit sound to the brain to provide a type of hearing for some deaf people. When connected to a tiny camera they can even capture shape and motion and transmit them to the brain, providing a type of vision for certain blind patients.</p>
<p>Knowing how these techniques are used medically shows what we understand about the brain now — but what's really fascinating is what this research will allow us to do in the future.</p>
<h3><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53dff8cc69bedd845ee2ba58-1200-1200/transcranial%20direct%20current%20stimulation_02.jpg" border="0" alt="Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation" width="800">A Jolt To The Outside Of The Head</h3>
<p>First you strap a small device to your head, making sure that its electrodes are lined up in just the right way, and then flip a switch. A small jolt of electricity is delivered to your brain. All of a sudden, you feel a slight buzz that soon fades. Fogginess and anxiety clear away — you're suddenly able to solve puzzles that stumped you before, you can discern patterns out of noise, and your memory works significantly better.&nbsp;</p>
<p>According to neuroscientists and a large community of DIY brain hackers, that's not science fiction — its already the reality of TDCS. Many researchers still have questions about how effective brain stimulation will be in the long term, but there's a lot of promising research so far.</p>
<p>What this does is provide a fairly broad but small dose of electricity to the brain, affecting millions of cells, and enhancing performance along the way.</p>
<p>"TDCS&nbsp;is more of a shotgun approach than a scalpel approach," says Weisend. They try to target a region and make sure as much electricity reaches that region as possible, but a broad beam is sent out along the way. Luckily, most results so far have shown that in supervised lab conditions, these techniques are safe.</p>
<p>So far, this technique shows the most promise for improving memory, pattern recognition, and vigilance — the ability to pay attention — according to&nbsp;Weisend. His team has tested or demonstrated TDCS on more than 500 people, <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana/" target="_blank">including Radiolab's Jad Abumrad</a>, and among other things, they've shown that people learning a new skill can learn twice as much as people who receive the same training but no stimulation.</p>
<p>Other studies have shown that electrical stimulation can provide the same energy boost as giving someone a cup of coffee. Researchers have found that people who undergo brain zapping sessions can <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101104154209.htm" target="_blank">enhance their mathematical abilities</a> for up to six months. The increased focus it provides can even <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap-your-brain-into-the-zone-fast-track-to-pure-focus.html" target="_blank">give people a huge boost</a> in U.S. military sniper training simulations. The military has also found that it can help pilots better <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amping-up-brain-function/" target="_blank">pick out targets from radar images</a>.</p>
<p>Promising results and cheap, easy-to-build devices have made battery-powered brain stimulators a favorite of the DIY community, especially for people interested in boosting their own brain power and for video gamers, who can use any boost in focus, vigilance, and the ability to see the next guy before he sees you.&nbsp;</p>
<p>These self-experimenters give neuroscientists like Weisend pause, however, as they may not be as careful as research teams and also can create unrealistic expectations for the technology.</p>
<p>"What we know is that changing the way a brain functions can make it perform better," says Weisend, but he also says that "the most interesting days for TDCS are definitely down the road" — when we better understand how it works.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>A Chip In Your Skull</h3>
<p>There are ways to have a much more direct impact on the brain than the broad one external electrical stimulation applies — if you are willing to put a sort of computer chip inside your skull.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Those same implants that are already used for vision and hearing could be used to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-implants-will-give-us-superpowers-2014-4#comments" target="_blank">enhance those senses</a> far beyond normal as technology improves and as we better learn how to communicate that information to the brain.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But one of the first neural enhancements that we might see is one that improves memory, according to Marcus.</p>
<p>Already, the military is using research into neural implants and electrodes implanted into the brain to restore damaged memory in people with trauma. Marcus says we should eventually be able to build implants that extend memory and make it more reliable — people are <a href="http://mobile.extremetech.com/latest/221694-us-scientists-push-ahead-with-memory-boosting-brain-implants-but-we-still-have-to-crack-the-brains-code-first" target="_blank">trying to do it already</a>. It's hard to say when we'll be able to do that — maybe not this decade, Marcus says, but perhaps the one after that.</p>
<p>First, we'll have to figure out how the brain codes away and stores memory.</p>
<p>That's the hurdle for a lot of this research, and it's hard to predict when we'll jump it. But <a href="http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jun2014/od-05.htm" target="_blank">governments</a> and <a href="http://www.alleninstitute.org/" target="_blank">research institutions</a> around the world have set modeling and understanding the brain as one of the top scientific priorities of our time.</p>
<p>Once we know how the brain changes as it stores information and implants a new skill, a brain implant could mimic that effect, making it possible to actually download the brain changes that would come with practice. A neuroscience and technological challenge like that may be far away — but we're talking about 50 year projects, not 500 year projects, says Marcus.</p>
<h3>What's Next</h3>
<p>No matter what type of technique we talk about, experts agree that aren't quite there yet — though we're a lot closer than most people think.</p>
<p>With regard to TDCS, Weisend thinks it'll be incorporated into training programs (the military could save billions of dollars if they could cut training time short),&nbsp;treatment for drug resistant brain disease, and maybe in professional occupations that demand a lot of focus and where lives are on the line.</p>
<p>Marcus is excited about the possibilities of neural implants, but he also thinks that our perspective on all this will be transformed as we learn more about how the mind works. "I think that the techniques we have now are going to look really crude in 30 years," he says.</p>
<p>But it's going to happen.&nbsp;And the world is going to change with it.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-technology-human-cyborgs-2014-7" >The Bionic Age Is No Longer A Distant Dream. It's Here.</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>Game Changers:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/game-changers" >Read more in this series.</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-man-bertolt-meyer-on-the-future-2014-8'Bionic Man' Says We Could All Want Artificial Limbs In The Futurehttp://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-man-bertolt-meyer-on-the-future-2014-8
Wed, 06 Aug 2014 10:39:00 -0400Katie Jennings
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53e24f3f6da811935520f4f5-1200-800/ap100512019587.jpg" border="0" alt="berthold meyer bionic hand prosthesis"></p><p>Bertolt Meyer was born without a lower left arm.</p>
<p>He started wearing his first prosthesis, or artificial arm, when he was 3 months old. Now at age 37, Meyer wears the futuristic i-limb — a high-tech bionic arm that looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.</p>
<p>Aesthetics aside, the i-limb is highly functional. It's a myoelectric prosthesis,<strong>&nbsp;</strong>which uses electrical signals from the muscles inside the residual limb to control the prosthesis.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Two electrodes lay on the bare skin of the residual limb of his lower left arm. "If you flex muscles in your arm, that will change the electrical pattern on the surface of the arm and these patterns are picked up by the electrodes that lie in the prosthesis," Meyer told Business Insider.</p>
<p>A microcontroller then amplifies the signal and the i-limb responds. If he flexes his upper arm muscles one way, the i-limb opens; another way, it closes.</p>
<p>In his professional life, Meyer is a professor of psychology at the Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany, where his research focuses on diversity.</p>
<p>In 2013, he was featured in the <a href="http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/sc/web/show/3378516/the-incredible-bionic-man#the-incredible-bionic-man" target="_blank">Smithsonian Channel documentary "The Incredible Bionic Man,</a>" which brought together leading researchers and roboticists to create the first "Bionic Man," assembled from the latest technology in prosthetics and artificial organs. Meyer's face was even used as the model for the man.</p>
<p>Meyer spoke with Business Insider about how his personal experience has motivated his research, how technology is changing perceptions of disability and the ethical questions surrounding the future of prosthetics.</p>
<p><em>The below interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.&nbsp;</em></p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">Business Insider: What motivated you to study social psychology?</strong></p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/53dbb1986bb3f70d1264c7ca-1200-924/ap167516060926 (1).jpg" border="0" alt="bertolt meyer bionic man"></p>
<p><strong>Bertolt Meyer:</strong> Well, I guess research is also always a little bit of "me" search. So I'd say one of the factors that influenced me is the experience of being different.</p>
<p>If you are born with a very visible physical disability, you learn very quickly what it's like to be treated differently and how it is to have people stare at you — children can be very cruel sometimes. I wondered where these things come from and how they affected us.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>BI:</strong> <strong>Was there a moment in your childhood when you understood that you were "different"?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> One early moment I can remember was in primary school, probably in second or third grade.</p>
<p>I was in a discussion with a classmate of mine and he asked me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"&nbsp;</p>
<p>I said, "I want to become a firefighter."</p>
<p>He said, "You can't do that, you only have one arm."</p>
<p>And I had never thought about that. I was devastated at that moment and that was something that really stuck.</p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">BI: In 2009 you started wearing the i-limb. Can you speak from your own experience how technology like the i-limb can change perceptions of disability?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> From personal experience, when you only have one arm, people usually meet you with a sense of pity. And people also kind of give you the feeling that they don't want to talk about it and they avoid gazing at you and so forth. It's uncomfortable at best — it's like an elephant in the room.</p>
<p>Now with the i-limb, that has completely changed. People have started to treat me in a different way.</p>
<p>It has changed to "oh wow, what a cool hand, can I have a look?" Especially kids, they're like "Wow a robot hand. Do you have super powers?"</p>
<p>Aside from the functional improvement that you get with such a prosthesis, what I also got was a psychological benefit. It drastically increased my self-esteem.</p>
<p><strong>BI: And what about from an academic perspective?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> I think these devices have the potential to change commonly held stereotypes towards people with a disability. One important dimension of stereotypes is how we associate people from stereotyped groups with competence.</p>
<p>For example, when we talk about disabled people, we usually see disabled people as incompetent people —meaning that these people are unable to act out their intentions. Whereas people who we perceive to be "like us" or people who we perceive as idols, we usually see as very, very competent.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Technology — high-tech and bionics — inherently evokes a feeling of competence. And what you get when you blend a person with a piece of high-tech is something that stereotypically is very competent.&nbsp;</p>
<p>To illustrate, I would like to use the example of Oscar Pistorius — before he shot his girlfriend.</p>
<p>When Pistorius tried to compete in the able-bodied Olympics, some people were wondering whether he had an unfair advantage. And some journalists talked about "techno-doping."</p>
<p>I can't judge whether he had an unfair advantage or not. But it was interesting because the one thing that all the talk about him did not convey was stereotypes of incompetence. It was is he "too competent" — is he almost a threat to the able-bodied athletes. And that is a drastic shift. Seeing someone with a disability as a threat, because a disability suddenly gives a person a potential: an interface to a piece of superior technology. &nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>BI: Do you find that you use your right hand and the i-limb interchangeably?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> No. For that the i-limb isn't good enough.</p>
<p>The problem with the i-limb, and any other fully dexterous prosthesis, is not the way it's engineered. We now have hands where at least theoretically every joint could move and could do so independently of every other joint in the hand.</p>
<p>The biggest challenge that we face today with the hand prosthesis is the interface between the prosthesis and the body. If you have dozens of little motors in an artificial hand that can mimic any movement that your natural hand can do, where should the delicate control signals for all of these motors come from? How do you connect that to the nerve system? And that is a problem that is still not solved.</p>
<p>So, no, I can't play the piano with my left hand. But one thing I can tell you is before I got the i-limb, I almost exclusively relied on my right sound hand for doing almost everything. This caused my right shoulder to really start to hurt because I overstrained my right arm and shoulder. Since I started wearing the i-limb, that issue is completely gone.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>BI: In the past, you've discussed how the i-limb has a Bluetooth, meaning there's a wireless connection to your iPhone. Have you been worried about someone being able to hack into your i-limb?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> The very first version of the app that connects the iPhone to the i-limb didn't have a passcode, so anyone could establish the connection. Now they've changed that. In order to pair the app with the hand you need a passcode and you need to type in the serial number of the hand (which is printed on the hand) in order to establish the connection.</p>
<p>I haven't really personally worried about someone hacking into my i-limb. Also there is a hardware off switch on the side of my socket. Even if something would go weird, I could switch it off.&nbsp;</p>
<p>It's more a conceptual worry that I have. That is if we continue to upgrade human bodies with technology and this technology is connected to the internet that does give the word hacking a new meaning. There are more stark examples than the potential of making another person's hand move.</p>
<p>The most extreme example I've come across was mentioned by an acquaintance of mine, <a href="http://www.marcgoodman.net/about/" target="_blank">Marc Goodman</a>, who does cyber security strategy. [Some diabetics use electronic insulin pumps to manage their blood glucose levels.] And these pumps are continuously connected to the patients bloodstream and give off insulin at certain doses and in certain intervals. Now these things also have Bluetooth built in. And somebody has actually built a device that sends out a Bluetooth signal that causes these insulin pumps to give off lethal doses of insulin. So suddenly with a hack you can kill someone.&nbsp;</p>
<p>So don't just think of prosthesis, think of these insulin pumps, pacemakers, artificial organs that we might see in the future. Things like that we need to start worrying about security. Because again in a connected world these developments really give the word hacking a new meaning.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>BI: One of the issues raised with the Bionic Man documentary was this idea of how much of a human could be replaced and still be considered human. Did your thoughts change after making the documentary?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BM:</strong> The question of whether someone or something is human or not does not depend on how many parts of the body we replace. In the end, it comes down to whether someone has a self-aware conscious.</p>
<p>The one thing that I'm really less worried about is the artificial intelligence. I do remember in the early '90s there were people who predicted that we'll have natural language interaction with computers by the year 2000. I learned from the Bionic Man project that we're still very far away from that. So actually my fears that some kind of machines will take over the world have lessened.</p>
<p>What I started to really think about is a question of enhancement. If you lose a limb, an artificial limb will not restore your functionality back to 100 percent. But I really wonder what will happen if — and it's a big if, it's not a given — we managed to invent an artificial limb or organ that's actually better than the natural counterpart.&nbsp;</p>
<p>At the moment, an artificial hand like the i-limb, doesn't cater to people with two hands because it can't offer them anything they can't do. It only caters to a very small niche market — the very few thousand people who lost a hand.</p>
<p>But if you had an artificial limb that would be better than a healthy limb, then you'd suddenly have a product that emerges form a niche market to a mass market because suddenly it appeals to everyone.&nbsp;</p>
<p>I'm not going to say that everyone is going to chop off their hands, but already we see body modification people who experiment with implanting little magnets into their hands to give them a sixth sense for magnetic fields. So if we already have extreme people willing to do that today, I'm pretty sure we'll have people who are willing to replace healthy limbs with artificial ones if these offer more functionality.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Think of plastic surgery. In certain parts of society, it's already accepted to alter a healthy body in order to increase its aesthetic appearance, why not the same concept for functionality?</p>
<p>It will make products more appealing to a larger market. There's a lot of money to be made. And I'm just a little worried that with such projects some corporations might leave the ethical issues to the side.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>GAME CHANGERS: &nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/game-changers" >Read more in the series</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7" >Humans Are Headed Down A Path That Will Allow Us To Supercharge The Brain</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-man-bertolt-meyer-on-the-future-2014-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7Brain Hacking Is Having Incredible Effects And It's Just Getting Startedhttp://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7
Tue, 05 Aug 2014 13:58:00 -0400Kevin Loria
<p><img class="full" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/530e0072eab8eadc59042c81-800-/screen%20shot%202014-02-26%20at%209.55.09%20am.png" alt="brain computer interface" border="0" width="800"></p><p>With a jolt of electricity, you might be able to enter a flow state that allows you to learn a new skill twice as fast, solve problems that have mystified you for hours, or even win a sharpshooting competition.</p>
<p>And this just scratches the surface in terms of what we might be able to do to improve cognition as our understanding of the brain improves. With an implanted chip, the possibilities might be close to limitless.</p>
<p>Researchers think that as we learn more about the brain, we'll be able to use electricity to boost focus, memory, learning, mathematical ability, and pattern recognition. Electric stimulation may also clear away depression and stave off cognitive decline. We'll eventually even implant computer chips that allow us to directly search the web for information or even download new skills — like Neo learning Kung-fu in The Matrix.</p>
<p>We're heading down a path that will allow us to supercharge the brain.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The key is decoding how the brain works. That's the hurdle in the way, and the one that billions of dollars in research are going towards right now.</p>
<p>"I don't think there's any doubt we'll eventually understand the brain,"&nbsp;says Gary Marcus,&nbsp;a professor of psychology at New York University, and an editor of the upcoming book “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Future-Brain-Leading-Neuroscientists/dp/069116276X/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_1" target="_blank">The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World’s Leading Neuroscientists</a>.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>"The big question is how long it's going to take," he says.</p>
<h3>Repairing And Enhancing</h3>
<p>Most of the technologies that could enhance our ability to think play another important role too. They may provide the keys to stopping cognitive decline, treating mental illness, and even restoring sight to the blind or hearing to the deaf.</p>
<p>Some of these techniques are already being used in that way.</p>
<p>Stimulating the brain with electricity to treat ailments has a long history. The ancient Greeks and Romans, including Pliny the Elder, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627314003894" target="_blank">shocked themselves with the Atlantic torpedo ray</a> to treat headaches. Treatments like transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) now show promise as a means of treating depression, epilepsy, and other drug-resistant brain disorders, according to Michael Weisend, a neuroscientist at Wright State Research Institution.</p>
<p>And neural implants show potentially far more possibilities. They already can transmit sound to the brain to provide a type of hearing for some deaf people. When connected to a tiny camera they can even capture shape and motion and transmit them to the brain, providing a type of vision for certain blind patients.</p>
<p>Knowing how these techniques are used medically shows what we understand about the brain now — but what's really fascinating is what this research will allow us to do in the future.</p>
<h3><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53dff8cc69bedd845ee2ba58-1200-1200/transcranial%20direct%20current%20stimulation_02.jpg" alt="Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation" border="0" width="800">A Jolt To The Outside Of The Head</h3>
<p>First you strap a small device to your head, making sure that its electrodes are lined up in just the right way, and then flip a switch. A small jolt of electricity is delivered to your brain. All of a sudden, you feel a slight buzz that soon fades. Fogginess and anxiety clear away — you're suddenly able to solve puzzles that stumped you before, you can discern patterns out of noise, and your memory works significantly better.&nbsp;</p>
<p>According to neuroscientists and a large community of DIY brain hackers, that's not science fiction — its already the reality of TDCS. Many researchers still have questions about how effective brain stimulation will be in the long term, but there's a lot of promising research so far.</p>
<p>What this does is provide a fairly broad but small dose of electricity to the brain, affecting millions of cells, and enhancing performance along the way.</p>
<p>"TDCS&nbsp;is more of a shotgun approach than a scalpel approach," says Weisend. They try to target a region and make sure as much electricity reaches that region as possible, but a broad beam is sent out along the way. Luckily, most results so far have shown that in supervised lab conditions, these techniques are safe.</p>
<p>So far, this technique shows the most promise for improving memory, pattern recognition, and vigilance — the ability to pay attention — according to&nbsp;Weisend. His team has tested or demonstrated TDCS on more than 500 people, <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana/" target="_blank">including Radiolab's Jad Abumrad</a>, and among other things, they've shown that people learning a new skill can learn twice as much as people who receive the same training but no stimulation.</p>
<p>Other studies have shown that electrical stimulation can provide the same energy boost as giving someone a cup of coffee. Researchers have found that people who undergo brain zapping sessions can <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101104154209.htm" target="_blank">enhance their mathematical abilities</a> for up to six months. The increased focus it provides can even <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328501.600-zap-your-brain-into-the-zone-fast-track-to-pure-focus.html" target="_blank">give people a huge boost</a> in U.S. military sniper training simulations. The military has also found that it can help pilots better <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/amping-up-brain-function/" target="_blank">pick out targets from radar images</a>.</p>
<p>Promising results and cheap, easy-to-build devices have made battery-powered brain stimulators a favorite of the DIY community, especially for people interested in boosting their own brain power and for video gamers, who can use any boost in focus, vigilance, and the ability to see the next guy before he sees you.&nbsp;</p>
<p>These self-experimenters give neuroscientists like Weisend pause, however, as they may not be as careful as research teams and also can create unrealistic expectations for the technology.</p>
<p>"What we know is that changing the way a brain functions can make it perform better," says Weisend, but he also says that "the most interesting days for TDCS are definitely down the road" — when we better understand how it works.&nbsp;</p>
<h3>A Chip In Your Skull</h3>
<p>There are ways to have a much more direct impact on the brain than the broad one external electrical stimulation applies — if you are willing to put a sort of computer chip inside your skull.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Those same implants that are already used for vision and hearing could be used to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-implants-will-give-us-superpowers-2014-4#comments" target="_blank">enhance those senses</a> far beyond normal as technology improves and as we better learn how to communicate that information to the brain.&nbsp;</p>
<p>But one of the first neural enhancements that we might see is one that improves memory, according to Marcus.</p>
<p>Already, the military is using research into neural implants and electrodes implanted into the brain to restore damaged memory in people with trauma. Marcus says we should eventually be able to build implants that extend memory and make it more reliable — people are <a href="http://mobile.extremetech.com/latest/221694-us-scientists-push-ahead-with-memory-boosting-brain-implants-but-we-still-have-to-crack-the-brains-code-first" target="_blank">trying to do it already</a>. It's hard to say when we'll be able to do that — maybe not this decade, Marcus says, but perhaps the one after that.</p>
<p>First, we'll have to figure out how the brain codes away and stores memory.</p>
<p>That's the hurdle for a lot of this research, and it's hard to predict when we'll jump it. But <a href="http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jun2014/od-05.htm" target="_blank">governments</a> and <a href="http://www.alleninstitute.org/" target="_blank">research institutions</a> around the world have set modeling and understanding the brain as one of the top scientific priorities of our time.</p>
<p>Once we know how the brain changes as it stores information and implants a new skill, a brain implant could mimic that effect, making it possible to actually download the brain changes that would come with practice. A neuroscience and technological challenge like that may be far away — but we're talking about 50 year projects, not 500 year projects, says Marcus.</p>
<h3>What's Next</h3>
<p>No matter what type of technique we talk about, experts agree that aren't quite there yet — though we're a lot closer than most people think.</p>
<p>With regard to TDCS, Weisend thinks it'll be incorporated into training programs (the military could save billions of dollars if they could cut training time short),&nbsp;treatment for drug resistant brain disease, and maybe in professional occupations that demand a lot of focus and where lives are on the line.</p>
<p>Marcus is excited about the possibilities of neural implants, but he also thinks that our perspective on all this will be transformed as we learn more about how the mind works. "I think that the techniques we have now are going to look really crude in 30 years," he says.</p>
<p>But it's going to happen.&nbsp;And the world is going to change with it.</p>
<p><a href="//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/"></a></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bionic-technology-human-cyborgs-2014-7" >The Bionic Age Is No Longer A Distant Dream. It's Here.</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>Game Changers:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/game-changers" >Read more in this series.</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-hacking-will-make-us-smarter-and-more-productive-2014-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-headphones-tricks-2015-2">14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-incredible-applications-of-bionics-in-sports-2014-7These Pictures Show How Shockingly Good Bionics In Sports Are Nowhttp://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-incredible-applications-of-bionics-in-sports-2014-7
Fri, 01 Aug 2014 11:20:00 -0400Leslie Baehr
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/53cfe8786da8117b5a089522-1200-800/457733749.jpg" border="0" alt="AMY PURDY" /></p><p>Prosthetic limbs have been around for centuries, but the prosthetics of today don't look like those from your grandfather's day.</p>
<p>These days limbs can be bionic, almost seamlessly blending in with their wearer in form <em>and</em> function. Limbs can <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/boston-bombing-victim-dances-at-ted-2014-2014-3">incorporate electronic components</a> that allow the limb to respond to their wearers similar to a biological limb. They can be shaped for different purposes or customized to their wearer's specifications.</p>
<p>It is enough of a task to make artificial legs that can walk naturally or arms that can grasp, but what happens when their wearer wants those limbs to be able to swim, climb, dance, or surf?</p>
<p>We sought out some of today's most amazing athletes who are pushing the idea of what it means to mix the biological with the technological and take their sports to new limits.</p><h3>Some people have become famous for taking prosthetics to the next level. In 1996, Aimee Mullins was the first amputee to compete on an NCAA track team, setting multiple world records.</h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/53dbbda969beddf64ef367e7-400-300/some-people-have-become-famous-for-taking-prosthetics-to-the-next-level-in-1996-aimee-mullins-was-the-first-amputee-to-compete-on-an-ncaa-track-team-setting-multiple-world-records.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>Source: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhJ4bPtqNjM">ABC</a></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>Running prosthetics, like the ones Mullins used and the ones seen below, take the shape of a cheetah leg. They have no heel and can store and release energy like a spring. But for other athletes, it is not always about putting one foot in front of the other ...</h3>
<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53dbbe6becad04a74b437f52-400-300/running-prosthetics-like-the-ones-mullins-used-and-the-ones-seen-below-take-the-shape-of-a-cheetah-leg-they-have-no-heel-and-can-store-and-release-energy-like-a-spring-but-for-other-athletes-it-is-not-always-about-putting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/sports/olympics/02cheetah.html?ref=sports&amp;_r=0">The New York Times</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/no-advantage-to-being-an-amputee-a-defense-of-oscar-pistoriuss-prostheses/260878/">The Atlantic</a></p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>... at least not in the way you'd think.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53cfea836da811256c08951c-400-300/-at-least-not-in-the-way-youd-think.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-incredible-applications-of-bionics-in-sports-2014-7#here-amy-purdy-of-the-us-paralympic-snowboard-team-changes-out-her-everyday-prosthetic-legs-for-her-snowboarding-ones-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> http://www.businessinsider.com/vibrating-clothes-could-help-blind-people-navigate-2014-6A Vibrating T-Shirt Could Help Blind People Navigatehttp://www.businessinsider.com/vibrating-clothes-could-help-blind-people-navigate-2014-6
Wed, 11 Jun 2014 21:48:00 -0400Tanya Lewis
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5398cc0769beddb4210d9660-800-577/eyeronman.jpg" border="0" alt="eyeronman" /></p><p>Today's prosthetic limbs restore many of the functions of missing limbs, but technology for overcoming blindness remains limited. Now, a team of researchers hopes to change that, by developing high-tech clothing that could help visually impaired people navigate.</p>
<p>The New York-based company Tactile Navigation Tools is developing a hands-free wearable device that uses sensors to detect obstacles and can alert the wearer to them with vibrations. Known as Eyeronman, the device could aid not only the blind, but also firefighters, soldiers and others, its developers say.</p>
<p>About 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired, according to the World Health Organization. Yet in developed countries, most <a href="http://www.livescience.com/14327-blind-people-echolocation-brains.html">blind people</a> still navigate using the standard white cane, which was invented in 1921. [<a href="http://www.livescience.com/12954-bionic-humans-artificial-limbs-technologies.html">Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies</a>]</p>
<p>When soldiers return from war, "the ones with limb loss are getting expensive devices, but the ones with vision loss &mdash; we're giving them a stick," said Dr. JR Rizzo, a rehabilitation doctor at NYU Langone Medical Center and the company's founder and chief medical adviser. "It's a little ridiculous," he said.</p>
<p>When Rizzo was 15 years old, he was diagnosed with choroideremia, a rare retinal degenerative disease that causes progressive vision loss, and he is now legally blind. He thinks blind people should have <a href="http://www.livescience.com/40844-smart-glasses-could-help-blind-people-navigate.html">more advanced sensory prostheses</a>.</p>
<p>"I don't care what the vision loss is from," Rizzo told Live Science. The goal is to increase mobility and get people integrated back into society, he said.</p>
<h2>Navigation by vibration</h2>
<p>Eyeronman consists of a vest outfitted with sensors and emitters for lidar, a laser-based system <a href="http://blog.laptopmag.com/2012-mercedes-e350-tech-drive-a-benz-with-brains-and-brawn">used in driverless cars</a>; ultrasound, which is used by bats and other animals for <a href="http://www.livescience.com/17240-bats-sonar-echolocation.html">echolocation</a>; and infrared, a type of electromagnetic radiation used by pit vipers to detect prey by sensing body heat.</p>
<p>The system converts input from these sensors into vibrations in a T-shirt made from electro-active polymers. For example, an obstacle on the wearer's lower left would cause the lower-left part of the shirt to vibrate. The system is designed to provide 360-degree obstacle detection, its developers say.</p>
<p>Studies show that visually impaired people use parts of the brain that are normally used for vision to process auditory input, which suggests that the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/41521-deaf-people-superhuman-senses.html">brain is inherently plastic</a>&mdash; it continually adapts and forms new neural connections. The Eyeronman users would make use of this plasticity to train themselves to use the device.</p>
<p>Just as the deaf-blind author and political activist Helen Keller was able to understand the concept of water by feeling it while having it spelled on her hand, a blind person could walk past a table and feel it by vibration, Rizzo said.</p>
<p>The patent-pending Eyeronman system could also be used by soldiers in combat, police or firefighters, who may have limited vision at night or due to smoke from fires or explosions, according to the company's website.</p>
<p>Some people have created similar devices, Rizzo said, but no one has created a platform that detects the shape of objects and displays them on the body like his team's invention does.</p>
<p>Right now, the system is still in the prototype phase. The researchers have developed a version that displays the sensor input to the shirt by lighting up LEDs, instead of producing vibration, but the principle is the same, Rizzo said.</p>
<p>Not all of the sensors will work ideally in all environments, so the researchers need to determine which ones work best and figure out how they can be made inexpensively, he said.</p>
<p>"There are lots of challenges, but I don't think any are to the point where we can't get on top of them," Rizzo said.</p>
<p><em>Follow Tanya Lewis on </em><em><a href="https://twitter.com/tanyalewis314">Twitter</a></em><em>and </em><a href="https://plus.google.com/117033537877488293678/posts"><em>Google+</em></a><em>. Follow us </em><a href="https://twitter.com/LiveScience"><em>@livescience</em></a><em>, </em><em><a href="http://www.facebook.com/#%21/livescience">Facebook</a> </em><em>&amp; </em><a href="https://plus.google.com/101164570444913213957/posts"><em>Google+</em></a><em>. Original article on <a href="http://www.livescience.com/46236-vibrating-clothes-help-blind-navigate.html">Live Science</a>.</em></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.livescience.com/28873-cool-technologies-inspired-by-nature.html">Biomimicry: 7 Clever Technologies Inspired by Nature</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.livescience.com/38585-body-beautiful-the-5-strangest-prosthetic-limbs.html">Body Beautiful: The 5 Strangest Prosthetic Limbs</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.livescience.com/38795-9-odd-tech-injuries.html">9 Odd Ways Your Tech Devices May Injure You</a></li>
</ul><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-microwaves-work-2014-6" >How Do Microwaves Cook Food?</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/vibrating-clothes-could-help-blind-people-navigate-2014-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-restore-movement-to-paralyzed-hand-2014-5This Might Be The Cure For Paralysishttp://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-restore-movement-to-paralyzed-hand-2014-5
Sun, 25 May 2014 10:01:00 -0400Kevin Loria
<p>A backbreaking injury or stroke that severs the connection the brain uses to send signals to the rest of the body can result in paralysis.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But now, scientists are developing technology that can read&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">signals directly from the brain and <strong>restore motion to a paralyzed hand</strong> &mdash; no healthy spine required.</span></p>
<p><span>And we're not talking about a small twitch:&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">They can make a paralyzed hand grasp something by reading the electrical stimuli put out by the brain and bypassing the spine to deliver those signals directly to the hand.</span></p>
<p>In a study <a href="http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnins.2014.00087/full#F1" target="_blank">published yesterday</a> in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, researchers showed that temporarily paralyzed monkeys could use brain implants connected to electrodes to tell their hands to grab onto a lever and pull it towards them. Watch:</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/~~/f?id=537b8ba46bb3f7db7e6473d0" border="0" alt="paralyzed monkey grasping.gif" title="paralyzed monkey grasping.gif" /></p>
<p>In the above GIF, you can see when the monkey starts sending the signal to the hand to start pulling the lever when the line under "Flexor Digitorum Profundus" starts to spike.</p>
<h2>The Experiment</h2>
<p>Researchers demonstrated the process using two healthy Rhesus macaque monkeys. In both they installed electrodes under the skin that would stimulate the muscles in the forearm and hand. They installed implants, or neural prosthetics, in the brains of the monkeys, and surgically tunneled the electrodes up so that there was a direct connection between brain and hand.</p>
<p>Instead of relying on a spine to transmit signals from the brain to the hand, the scientists used this artificial electrode system to bypass damaged areas.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The macaques were trained to pull the lever and hold it in place for a moment before returning it to its position.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Such grasping motion is actually quite complex: It requires coordination between the brain and many muscles in the hand and arm.&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">After a success, the monkey would receive a piece or fruit or a drop of yogurt.&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>During the trials the monkeys were injected with a drug called muscimol (interestingly <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2823376/" target="_blank">also the main psychoactive component</a> in some psychedelic mushrooms), which reliably paralyzed one monkey and somewhat less reliably paralyzed the other, though it inhibited hand and arm muscles the most.</p>
<p>Since many spinal injuries and strokes cause paralysis but leave some neural connections intact, researchers say that demonstrating that implants can restore grasping in these cases is important &mdash; so even if one monkey wasn't completely paralyzed, the results are still relevant.</p>
<p>The monkey with the less paralyzed response showed that the implants could effectively tell the arm to grasp and pull the lever. The other monkey was successful in some trials but not all, though researchers think that it may have had its electrodes set up in a less effective way.</p>
<p>According to Dr. Andrew Jackson of Newcastle University, who led the research, this is the first time that it's been shown that the connection between the brain and the nerves and muscles that control grasping can be artificially restored.</p>
<h2>Restoring Paralysis In Humans</h2>
<p>Restoring the ability to grasp is new, but researchers have been experimenting with stimulating the spinal cord to restore movement for some time.</p>
<p>Prior studies have shown that direct stimulation can make arms and legs move. The eventual goal is to use the results of this study to try and create an implant that would allow the brain to send signals to electrodes that could then activate neural networks and move body parts, as demonstrated with monkeys here.</p>
<p>The same researchers who conducted this study have shown that they can read the human brain sending the same movement signals to the hand, which can then be interpreted by moving a ball on a screen, as demonstrated in the GIF below.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/~~/f?id=537b98966bb3f705386473d0" border="0" alt="hand motion implant.gif" title="hand motion implant.gif" /></p>
<p>Still, there are some obstacles. After 100 days, some scarring was seen around the electrodes in one monkey, which could cause problems in someone who would have long-term implants.</p>
<p>Additionally, when a person breaks their back and injures their spinal cord, the parts of their brain that control motion change over time, which could present complications that differ from these monkey test subjects. However, the researchers who conducted this study say that it's still possible to read the electrical signals that would control motion in the brain of a person who has been paralyzed for an extended period of time.</p>
<p>Over a long period of time, researchers speculate, continued stimulation in this way would strengthen neural networks, perhaps helping restore the connection between brain and body. The neural connections that remain, especially in the case of a stroke or partial paralysis, might actually get stronger over time. And they think it won't take long to develop the technology to make this medically possible.</p>
<p>"I think within five years we could have an implant which is ready for people," said Dr. Jackson <a href="http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/item/paralysed-hand-able-to-move-again" target="_blank">in the press release</a>. "Much of the technology we used for this is already being used separately in patients today, and has been proven to work. We just needed to bring it all together."</p>
<p>Here's a video of Jackson discussing the experiment:</p>
<p><iframe width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6-HjgEcgQsI"></iframe></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/10-brain-implant-superpowers-2014-5" >10 Amazing Superpowers Humans Will Be Able To Get From Brain Implants</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-restore-movement-to-paralyzed-hand-2014-5#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-restore-movement-to-paralyzed-hand-2014-5This Might Be The Cure For Paralysishttp://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-restore-movement-to-paralyzed-hand-2014-5
Tue, 20 May 2014 16:17:00 -0400Kevin Loria
<p>A backbreaking injury or stroke that severs the connection the brain uses to send signals to the rest of the body can result in paralysis.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But now, scientists are developing technology that can read&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">signals directly from the brain and <strong>restore motion to a paralyzed hand</strong> &mdash; no healthy spine required.</span></p>
<p><span>And we're not talking about a small twitch:&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">They can make a paralyzed hand grasp something by reading the electrical stimuli put out by the brain and bypassing the spine to deliver those signals directly to the hand.</span></p>
<p>In a study <a href="http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnins.2014.00087/full#F1" target="_blank">published this week</a>&nbsp;in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, researchers showed that temporarily paralyzed monkeys could use brain implants connected to electrodes to tell their hands to grab onto a lever and pull it towards them. Watch:</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/~~/f?id=537b8ba46bb3f7db7e6473d0" border="0" alt="paralyzed monkey grasping.gif" title="paralyzed monkey grasping.gif" /></p>
<p>In the above GIF, you can see when the monkey starts sending the signal to the hand to start pulling the lever when the line under "Flexor Digitorum Profundus" starts to spike.</p>
<h2>The Experiment</h2>
<p>Researchers demonstrated the process using two healthy Rhesus macaque monkeys. In both they installed electrodes under the skin that would stimulate the muscles in the forearm and hand. They installed implants, or neural prosthetics, in the brains of the monkeys, and surgically tunneled the electrodes up so that there was a direct connection between brain and hand.</p>
<p>Instead of relying on a spine to transmit signals from the brain to the hand, the scientists used this artificial electrode system to bypass damaged areas.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The macaques were trained to pull the lever and hold it in place for a moment before returning it to its position.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Such grasping motion is actually quite complex: It requires coordination between the brain and many muscles in the hand and arm.&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">After a success, the monkey would receive a piece or fruit or a drop of yogurt.&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p>During the trials the monkeys were injected with a drug called muscimol (interestingly <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2823376/" target="_blank">also the main psychoactive component</a> in some psychedelic mushrooms), which reliably paralyzed one monkey and somewhat less reliably paralyzed the other, though it inhibited hand and arm muscles the most.</p>
<p>Since many spinal injuries and strokes cause paralysis but leave some neural connections intact, researchers say that demonstrating that implants can restore grasping in these cases is important &mdash; so even if one monkey wasn't completely paralyzed, the results are still relevant.</p>
<p>The monkey with the less paralyzed response showed that the implants could effectively tell the arm to grasp and pull the lever. The other monkey was successful in some trials but not all, though researchers think that it may have had its electrodes set up in a less effective way.</p>
<p>According to Dr. Andrew Jackson of Newcastle University, who led the research, this is the first time that it's been shown that the connection between the brain and the nerves and muscles that control grasping can be artificially restored.</p>
<h2>Restoring Paralysis In Humans</h2>
<p>Restoring the ability to grasp is new, but researchers have been experimenting with stimulating the spinal cord to restore movement for some time.</p>
<p>Prior studies have shown that direct stimulation can make arms and legs move. The eventual goal is to use the results of this study to try and create an implant that would allow the brain to send signals to electrodes that could then activate neural networks and move body parts, as demonstrated with monkeys here.</p>
<p>The same researchers who conducted this study have shown that they can read the human brain sending the same movement signals to the hand, which can then be interpreted by moving a ball on a screen, as demonstrated in the GIF below.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/~~/f?id=537b98966bb3f705386473d0" border="0" alt="hand motion implant.gif" title="hand motion implant.gif" /></p>
<p>Still, there are some obstacles. After 100 days, some scarring was seen around the electrodes in one monkey, which could cause problems in someone who would have long-term implants.</p>
<p>Additionally, when a person breaks their back and injures their spinal cord, the parts of their brain that control motion change over time, which could present complications that differ from these monkey test subjects. However, the researchers who conducted this study say that it's still possible to read the electrical signals that would control motion in the brain of a person who has been paralyzed for an extended period of time.</p>
<p>Over a long period of time, researchers speculate, continued stimulation in this way would strengthen neural networks, perhaps helping restore the connection between brain and body. The neural connections that remain, especially in the case of a stroke or partial paralysis, might actually get stronger over time. And they think it won't take long to develop the technology to make this medically possible.</p>
<p>"I think within five years we could have an implant which is ready for people," said Dr. Jackson <a href="http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/item/paralysed-hand-able-to-move-again" target="_blank">in the press release</a>. "Much of the technology we used for this is already being used separately in patients today, and has been proven to work. We just needed to bring it all together."</p>
<p>Here's a video of Jackson discussing the experiment:</p>
<p><iframe width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6-HjgEcgQsI"></iframe></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/10-brain-implant-superpowers-2014-5" >10 Amazing Superpowers Humans Will Be Able To Get From Brain Implants</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-restore-movement-to-paralyzed-hand-2014-5#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/deka-arm-mind-controlled-prosthetic-limb-2014-5The Guy Who Invented The Segway Made A Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Arm That Really Workshttp://www.businessinsider.com/deka-arm-mind-controlled-prosthetic-limb-2014-5
Mon, 12 May 2014 10:26:00 -0400Lisa Eadicicco
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5370d51369bedd31338cc478-800-/deka.png" border="0" alt="DEKA" width="800" /></p><p>The Food and Drug Administration has just approved a prosthetic limb that may be one of the most realistic, human-like implementations to date.</p>
<p>The prosthetic arm, which was created by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, could be controlled through its user's thoughts and is capable of performing complex functions.</p>
<p>The mind-controlled prosthetic, called the DEKA Arm, can detect up to 10 movements and is the same size and weight as a natural human arm, according to <a href="http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm396688.htm">a statement from the FDA</a> first spotted by <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-05-09/novel-prosthetic-arm-from-segway-inventor-approved-by-u-dot-s-dot-fda">Bloomberg</a>.</p>
<p>The DEKA Arm detects electrical activity caused by the contraction of muscles close to where the prosthesis is attached. Those electrical signals are then sent to a computer processor in the DEKA Arm, which triggers a specific movement.</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5370d43369bedd02348cc469/deka2.gif" border="0" alt="DEKA2" /><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">During its trial, the FDA equipped 36 participants with the DEKA Arm to determine how it performed during household tasks. According to the FDA, 90% of participants were able to complete tasks that they couldn't with their current prosthesis, which include using keys and locks, preparing food, feeding oneself, brushing hair and using zippers.</span></p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5370d433ecad04ac782b03a6/deka5.gif" border="0" alt="DEKA5" /><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The DEKA Arm has been nicknamed Luke after the "Star Wars" protagonist who receives an arm replacement in "The Empire Strikes Back."&nbsp;</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The prosthetic can be configured for those with limb loss at the shoulder, mid-upper arm, or mid-lower arm, but can't be used in scenarios involving limb loss at the elbow or wrist joint.</span></p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5370d434eab8ea534e2b03bc/deka3.gif" border="0" alt="DEKA3" /><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The FDA says this is the first prosthetic arm controlled by electrical signals that can accomplish multiple movements at once. The U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Agency has contributed $40 million to the project, which is part of its Revolutionizing Prosthetics program.</span></p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5370d4336bb3f7ff178d1372/deka4.gif" border="0" alt="DEKA4" /><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The method of controlling the DEKA Arm is unique in that uses "end point control," Linda Resnik, a research health scientist with Providence VA Medical Center, </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCUwoxuAdYQ">said in a video showcasing the technology</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> used in a trial in 2012.</span></p>
<p><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5370d4336bb3f774248d136b/deka1.gif" border="0" alt="DEKA1" /><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">This means that the user can think about the position of the terminal device, or end of the prosthesis, and move that around in space. That type of technology is what makes it easier to position separate joints such as individual fingers.&nbsp;</span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/3d-printed-sleep-apnea-mouthpiece-2014-5" >Researchers Have 3D Printed A Solution To One Of The Most Common Sleeping Disorders In The US</a></strong></p>
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